Haunted
by Raven Ehtar
Summary: The line separating light and dark isn't always so definite. Ryou, an apparently ordinary boy, is chosen by an ancient Egyptian artifact to harbor a soul stained and twisted my memories and unknowable powers. Rated for imagery, trauma, and future gore.
1. Prologue

_**A/N: **__Alright, here we are at the beginning of my __Yu-Gi-Oh!__ project. Yeah, I'm a __YGO!__ fan. I'm a dork._

_Just one or two notes before we get into the story. First, with each chapter there will probably be notes on things going on or used in the story. Partly to help keep everyone orientated on where we are in canon, as sometimes it might be hard to tell. I try to keep my fics true to canon as well as realistic, so if I use details that aren't hugely obvious, I'll site my sources. Or, on the occasions when I bend or break canon, I'll own up to it and do my best to justify why it had to be done._

_On a related note, every now and then I will be using non-English words or phrases. (GASP!) I don't sprinkle in foreign words just to make the story seem more exotic, I use them because I think that they're necessary for one reason or another. Some words just don't have a very good translation to English, or even an English counterpart. One example would be the Japanese phrase 'Nii-chan', a familiar way of saying 'older brother'. Yes, obviously that can be translated to English, but you don't normally hear younger siblings going around squeaking 'older brother'. Even 'brother' is awkward. So to keep the feel right, 'Nii-chan' stays. There'll be more words / phrases in Japanese and Egyptian strewn about, but hey, these are the places where the story is taking place, so deal, people._

_Foreign words and phrases, history, mythology, any obscure culture references, basically anything that might be unknown, confusing, or just really interesting I'll give a little notation in the Author's Notes __after__ the chapter. So if you see a word you don't know, you can either scroll down and find it or just wait it out until you get to the end._

_Only one more note before we get started, __**there will be spoilers!**__ YGO!__ has been around forever, so I'm assuming anyone who is here has a good understanding of what's going on. That said, I'll be using the manga canon, not the anime, (so no sojourn to meet the Kaiba step-brother Noah or the highly unlikely subplot with Dartz and Atlantis), and I'll be completely ignoring anything after the original story, so nothing from the movies, GX, 5D's, or (gag) Zexal._

_Kay, I'm done. Enjoy!_

_**Warnings:**__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled, then read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Disclaimer:**__Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Prologue

Raven Ehtar

…

**Haunted:**  
><em>- To be visited or pursued, most often persistently, by spirits or specters of unknown origin.<br>- To be preyed upon, as by some lingering emotion, memory or obligation._

…

In all things, there are rules, basic laws that allow the universe to run smoothly. Gravity, cause and effect, action and reaction, all are principles used to make sense of the world. The discipline of magic is no different. It, too, has its guidelines initiates wishing to learn the art of magic, which is the art of slipping into fine print of those laws, of levering them against one another, must know better than he knows himself. Before the first incantation can be read or the first spell spun the laws must be thoroughly understood, lest the wielder of the spell make some fundamental error and be consumed by the very powers he sought to control.

There is the Law of Conservation, which states that power cannot spring forth without a source, and conversely, no power may simply disappear without affecting change. To perform magic, the user must draw his energy from _somewhere_, be it from his own body and spirit or from some outside supply. Once drawn, that power must be used up completely, or the residual will spin away without purpose. Loose magic, actuated but without guidance, doesn't bear contemplating. There's the Law of Contagion, wherein two objects, once they have come into contact with one another, will forever bear impressions of and be affected by the other. Many is the mage who has forgotten this basic premise, and believed that change he has wrought in the world was change limited to the external. No user of the arts ever walks away unchanged, immune from the powers he has used.

One of the most central laws is the Law of Polarity, of Opposites. It is also known as the Law of Balance. It states that for everything that ever was, is or will be, somewhere there is its opposite, its perfect reflection. For day there is night, for hot there is cold, for male there is female, for good there is evil. One cannot exist without the other, and where there is imbalance in one, it manifests in the other. However, despite how complete a picture this offers, and however irreconcilably distant these things appear to be from each other, they all share one thing in common: they all exist and bear some weight in the fabric of reality. In one form or another, be it in mass, in spirit, or just in consciousness, they all take some sort of shape. In this way, all things known to man can be placed on one side of the cosmic coin, and on its opposite face would be the opposite of all.

Void. The never-was, the never-shall, the spaces between where nothing can exist, nothing is created and all is devoured.

Few civilizations have ever grasped this concept, that what they know to be the great opposing forces can all be considered as one on a grander scale, with Nothingness the opposite of all. Few ever did, but there was one worth noting. The high priests and learned scholars of Ancient Egypt recognized this tenant, and they examined it closely. One faction, that of the Priest-Mages, saw this Void and believed that if they could but bend it to their will, they could draw a new kind of power from it, in quantities never before dreamed of. In attempt to harness this potential source, they gave it a name, even as they had given names to their Gods so they might evoke and call upon them.

Names are powerful things. By naming what was once nameless, they gave something formless a handgrip they could grasp, and in this way they intended to wield their new power.

In their eagerness to possess the potential of the Void, the Priest-Mages forgot all it was that a name could do. In their lust for power, they disregarded the very nature of what they desired to control.

Words are a special kind of magic, for words are the shadows of things. By speaking, one can evoke action, or thought, or will. Names are the most potent words of all, for they not only give shape, they also confer identity. When a name is given to something that before was – literally – nothing, it confers shape, identity and _will_. Foolishly, the Priest-Mages birthed a new God-thing from the essence of Nothing.

The Void that was the opposite of all existence changed under the influence of its new name. It, in defiance of its very nature, developed a consciousness, self-awareness and intelligence. It was the embodiment of Nothing, and yet by existing it was its own opposite as well as the very epitome of its nature. By being, it was what it was not, what it could not be. By giving Nothingness a form, the Priest-Mages called forth a creature of paradox, a being that was a perversion even unto itself. A God-thing of madness and rage.

In its immeasurable wrath, the God-thing seized upon the Priest-Mages that had named it, and _unmade_ them, as though they had never been. The God-thing knew nothing of mercy or forgiveness, and unmade the men down to their very souls, so they might never know immortality in the afterlife. With their souls snuffed out as candle flames, they would never know anything ever again.

The God-thing might have continued on and on, until there was nothing left at all. With a mind and will, the being also felt desire, desire to unmake all that there was, to consume and eradicate the abomination that was existence. But with a physical shape, the God-thing found itself limited as never before; with a body, it was bound by the same laws that governed all life. It could not stretch out and cover all that there was as it once had, now it must move slowly, its ability to act limited by the immediacy of its own body.

Seeing what it was they had unleashed, those Priest-Mages who escaped the first terrible onslaught of dissolution cried out to their Gods to rescue them, to strike down the result of their folly. The Gods heard Their Priests, and when They turned Their eyes toward them, They were appalled at the atrocity They saw. They knew exactly what it was, and They knew that it would not stop its carnage even when all the Earth was a mere memory. It would eventually turn its gaze to the very Gods and the entire universe beyond.

So the deities of Egypt gathered together, light and dark setting aside Their differences to face against a common threat. They combined Their powers, divine and infernal alike, and bent Their wills against the monster Their Priests had unleashed. With the strength of the pantheon working in concert, the Gods bound the God-thing and sealed it away in darkness. They could not unmake it as it had unmade others, nor could they abolish its shape, for once a thing has been named, it cannot be unnamed. Instead, it was sealed away in a place where neither Gods nor humans may tread and where it could no longer continue its carnage. Had They been able to, They would have sealed it away completely, with no chink or gap in its prison, but there are rules, even for Gods. They could not create a prison without a door, but this door was sealed tightly with blood and dark magic's. The secrets of the rituals and of the God-thing contained within were written within a single book, and that book was entrusted to a single, aged Priest to guard. He had not a drop of magical blood in his veins, and so it was safe for him to possess the knowledge. It was also his duty to find one trustworthy, an apprentice, to take on his task after his death.

Within its prison, the God-thing tore and raged against the walls of its new world, but could not free itself by force alone. The Gods had been clever in Their construction of the prison. Brute strength could not rend it, nor fury weaken it, either from within or without. The only way to escape was through the door, and the only way to open the door was with the keys described within the tome guarded by the chosen Priest. The God-thing might have been a construct of madness, but it knew well that for any hope of escape it would have to rely upon humans. It would have to learn subtler methods to be free once again.

With nothing but time, it did learn. It learned how to harness its own abilities and to exploit them to best advantage. While it was true that the God-thing the Priest-Mages had called forth was an embodiment of Void, that did not mean that it represented _all_ of Void. There still existed patches of Nothingness, places of Void outside of the God-thing's body, and therefore beyond the confines of its prison. While it could not use these oases of self to escape, it could reach out and affect them, ever so slightly. Like a child blowing on the calm surface of a lake, there were ripples, but tiny ones.

It was a slow, incredibly slow process, and for many hundreds of years, the secrets of the God-thing and the door to its prison were well protected. Eventually, the world of men simply forgot. But the God-thing, it did not forget, nor forgave men for their selfish gifts of name and shape. It worked, slowly yet tirelessly, learning more of the nature of humans, finding those who were best positioned to use those forbidden magic's and who were the most easily influenced by gentle nudges and whispers of power. The God-thing stretched itself thin, reaching out, finding those places within human hearts and minds that were touched with darkness, despair or loneliness, anything that might be construed as "emptiness". There the God-thing waited and planned for the proper time, the time when He would be free, and He would have His revenge upon the ones who had named Him so long ago:

Zorc Necrophades.

…

On the edge of the desert, a gentle breeze caressed the landscape like a lover, eliciting the soft sighs of sand and brush. Nights were cold in the desert, freezing as the days were boiling. As the sun God Ra descended below the horizon, swallowed up by the sky Goddess Nuit to travel through the underworld and be birthed anew with the golden banners of dawn, He took with Him the life-giving light and warmth. Surrendering the night unto Nuit, the gentle Goddess arched Her body over the land, Her soft skin glistening with stars. Under the Goddess's protection, the men and women of Egypt could sleep peacefully, resting from their day's labors and preparing for the next.

But for every innocent soul held in Nuit's embrace, there were those who skulked within Her shadows, who used Her sinuous darkness to conceal their deeds from virtuous eyes.

A scream, hot with blood and terror, ripped through the silken calm of Nuit's night.

And this night, the crimes committed under the Goddess's eye were true atrocities to behold.

The scream was the first and only warning to the rest of the village. The response was lightning quick as slumbering folk were jolted out of their dreams into the pitch black of their huts, tumbling up from sleeping pallets, searching for anything that might serve as weapons. Blindly, hands clutched after stones, beer jars, the rare knife or sickle, anything that was close to hand and better than mere fingernails. The villagers flew from their mud brick huts, expecting a pack of desert jackals or a desperate pride of lions preying on an unguarded neighbor, or at worst, a wandering band of outlaws, come to raid as the tiny village slept.

Imagine, then, the confusion when, as they charged into the roads, sleep logged but ready to defend all that they owned from the unknown intruders, they came against a completely organized body of men invading their village. They were many, bearing torches, horses and good bronze blades… and they wore the armor of the Great Pharaoh's own army!

Villagers were seized as they emerged from their doors, without ceremony and without explanation to any, and dragged, one by one to a small temple, set into the side of a hill and dug below the earth, that had lain there before the first villager had ever build a hut. They were brought, cursing and fighting, to the waiting Priest-Mages, so they might begin a forbidden ritual of oldest magic's. Those villagers who did not emerge from their homes were sought out, dragged from their huts and taken to the hidden temple to join their fellows.

The screams wouldn't stop, nor the pleading, the threats, the desperate bargaining or the sobs for mercy as the Pharaoh's own men dragged them away. Men, women, children, even babes not yet out of the cradle, all were gathered to be brought before the Priest-Mages. Those who offered too much resistance were knocked unconscious, bound, or their legs broken. The Priest-Mages stipulated only that the villagers must remain alive and whole, their condition beyond that was of no consequence, and the soldiers used whatever means made their jobs easier. In this way, the entire village was emptied, every villager taken underground to the temple, to the Priests and their magic's.

All… save one. In the confusion and chaos of the attack, one mother got her child away to hide before she herself was taken. Her son watched as she, too, was taken by the men who wielded their strange, shining blades that flashed red in the light of their torches. Even now he remained, wedged between two huts and in complete darkness. He knows it's not a good hiding place, that if the village is searched more thoroughly he will be found, found and taken. He knows he should find a better hole to hide in… but he doesn't. He can't convince his body to move for terror, as the screams of the villagers, his family and neighbors, slowly turn from pleads to inarticulate shrieks of agony coming from within the temple. Huddled in his hiding place, the last poor protection given by his mother, the boy could only tremble and try to stop his ears from hearing.

The hellish glow of torches spilled down the narrow space as soldiers trooped past, in search of more villagers, joking amongst themselves. The boy felt ill, and suddenly even more afraid than before. They were laughing? They found some kind of joy amid the screams? Were these men human, or were they demons that ravaged his home? The boy pressed himself further back, as far as he could go, away from the revealing light and wished himself away, invisible, gone, anywhere but here.

Perhaps if he had remained still they might not have noticed him.

There was a shout, and the sound of heavy footfalls. The sudden form of a soldier, silhouetted against the glow of fire that glinted off of armor and bare bronze blade, cut a ragged black hole in the narrow passage of light. His grin was terrible as he called to the boy, coaxing him from his corner, but his eyes were more terrible still. The boy only retreated further away, pressing his back to the rough, cold wall behind him and praying to any Gods that might hear to save him.

The soldier only laughed, amused by his prey's pathetic whimpering and squeezed between the huts to fish the boy out himself. The boy stared, unable to take his eyes away as he came closer, his large, calloused hand reaching for him –

Suddenly darkness, and silence. All was peaceful and still.

For a moment, the boy wondered if he had died, and if he would soon see Anubis, Guardian of the Scales, ready to weigh his heart against Ma'at, Embodiment of Truth. He wondered if his heart would pass the test, or if he would fail and be handed over to Ammit, Eater of Souls.

Then, slowly, the light returned. Only it wasn't light, it was still as dark as ever in his narrow hiding place. It only seemed light in comparison to… What? To where? Wherever it was that he had been, where the weakest of moons would have been as the sun, and where the screams of his dying village had been silenced. Now they returned, but the boy didn't hear them, distracted by the disappearance of the soldier that had been reaching for him. All was as it had been, but the soldier was gone, his torch fallen into the dust and guttering. The boy stared, unable to comprehend.

Around the edges of his vision, the struggling fire made the shadows dance. But he thought, maybe, that they were moving on their own, reaching toward him as the soldier had.

_You will not die today, boy._

He jumped, pressing back against the wall harder than ever, his eyes darting from side to side in search of whoever had spoken so close to him.

_You will not die,_ it repeated, and the boy realized that he couldn't _hear_ the voice, it seemed to be coming from his own mind.

_And if you so wish, you need never fear death again…_

…

Disembodied souls did not dream. Souls free of the demands of the flesh had no need to sleep. So what this soul experienced could not be called an awakening from a nightmare, so much as shaking free of tangled memories. Even so, those memories were the very stuff of nightmares, and the soul was not slow about brushing them away.

The razing of that tiny town on the west side of the Great Mother Nile, and the slaughter of its people was a memory the soul would never forget, and never wanted to. After the Pharaoh's army had left, _he_, the soul now trapped in this limbo, had been the only survivor. He'd heard every one of his fellow villagers be put to the sword, had seen some of what had been done to them, and they were memories burned into his very essence. Later he had learned why his village had been massacred, and exactly what it was that had been done to them in that hidden temple.

The slaughter of nearly one hundred people, and the binding of their very souls, for seven trinkets.

If the Pharaoh had ordered the destruction of his home because he believed it to be a den of thieves, he might have eventually forgiven. Though, possibly not, as well. That night, still as raw and vivid in his mind as when he had laid hidden in the alley, included the details of what had been in that temple. The tables, the long, complicated runnels carved into the floor to form a pattern, the huge vats hung over flames stoked to white hot heat… No, perhaps he would never have been able to excuse the deeds, whatever the motivation, but when it was all for seven golden items…

His quest for revenge had pitted him against the Pharaoh of all the Upper Kingdom of Egypt, man said to be descended of the Gods, and all his legions. To avenge the death of a village would have a single man battling against an entire nation. It was the kind of tale children were told at their parents' knee, and not one likely to end in the favor of the underdog. Not in the waking world. But then, if Pharaoh were a God on Earth, then he, the underdog, had powerful allies. Powerful enough to face the Gods of Egypt.

Except something had gone wrong, and now he was here. Not defeated, for even after death he would not accept defeat, he clung even to the entrapment of his soul if it meant he would have another chance to destroy his enemies. He waited, a prisoner of one of those golden trinkets that had left an entire village empty, fit only for the jackals and snakes.

But he would have his revenge. He would. It was not only his soul that was held prisoner, but somewhere, in another item, that of the Pharaoh, as well. It was only a matter of time for his second opportunity to arise, and even if it took until the end of eternity, he would be there at the end of all things, still waiting.

Though what he might be at the end of all that time, he didn't know. At the end of eternity, he wasn't sure if he would still be a man. He could already feel the boundaries of his identity softening and chipping away, and that of others pressing into him. He was not the only soul trapped within the item; there was also that ally, the one capable of facing the Gods, there with him.

As were the many fractured and still terrified souls of the entire village of Kul Elna.

…

_**A/N:**__ Okay, lots of these, so I'll try to be brief._

_**Ra: **__Also known as the father of the Gods, he is usually depicted as having the head of a hawk, sometimes also with a sun disk._

_**Nuit:**__ Also known as Nut, she is the sister/wife of Geb, God of the earth and mother of Isis, Osiris, Nepthys, and Seth._

_**Anubis:**__ The jackal-headed God of death and mummification. He watches over the rituals of death and the weighing of hearts on a person's death._

_**Ma'at:**__ Goddess of truth, justice and harmony, seen as either a woman with a feather in her hair or as… a feather. The feather hearts are weighed against, in fact._

_**Ammit:**__ Not a Goddess and not worshipped, Ammit is a demon living close by the scales of justice, having the head of a crocodile, the upper body of a lion and the lower body of a hippopotamus (the three big 'man eaters' of Ancient Egypt). If one hasn't lived by the principles of Ma'at and their heart is found too heavy, they are devoured by Ammit._

_**Ancient Egyptian History:**__ I'm trying to stay fairly accurate, but the very first part seen here, with the Priest-Mages and their understanding of magic… Yeah, I made that up. This is where the 'fiction' in 'fanfiction' comes into play. ;D_

_**Zorc Necrophades:**__ This is another place where I'm playing with what's unknown to fit my purposes in the story. So far as I know, we don't get any backstory for Zorc other than 'Lord of Darkness', which leaves some room for interpretation. This is mine._

_**Timeline:**__ Okay, so obviously the first section is many, many years before the time seen in Millennium/Memory World. I'm never going to pin down exactly when that is. As for when in real time I'm putting the Millennium World, when Pharaoh Atem and everyone are, we're going to be somewhere between the late New Kingdom and early Third Intermediate Periods (1150 – 850 BC). This seems like a fairly good time to be set for what we see in canon, with what they have in way of culture while being a time of lots of change. (Again, not too specific for plot convenience.) _

_**Law of Polarity:**__ The laws mentioned were inspired pretty heavily from the seven Hermetic Principles found in the __Kybalion__, (look 'em up, way too much to explain in a fanfic notation), but this one was pretty much lifted as it was. I love the Hermetic Principles, and reading this one just got me thinking a lot, so it had to show up somewhere. Those interested but don't want to look it up, the Principle of Polarity:  
><em>**"Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled."**

_**Kul Elna:**__ The fictional village that was razed to create the seven Millennium Items and where 'Bakura' came from. While doing research for this I found it mentioned (I don't remember where) that it was based on the real village Qurna. Considering where it is in relation to Luxor (Thebes in ancient Egypt and the capital during the New Kingdom), and the eerily familiar pictures of the place, I believe it. Check it out, it's weird._

_**Backstory:**__ If it isn't obvious yet, this a backstory fic. What I love to write the most. So we won't be focusing so much on action or card games, but on characters. Heads up if you dislike a lot of internalization. But if you like the Bakuras, stick around! ;D_

_Right, that should be it. Updates will be slow in coming, as I have a several page list of projects (not kidding), but I have almost the entire thing sketched out, so no worries it won't be finished._

_**Thanks for reading, everyone!**_


	2. Part I

_**A/N:**__ And we're back already for Part I! Everyone who has read, reviewed, alerted or faved, thank you so, so much! I'm actually really surprised at the reception this has received just from a brief prologue. Thank you all, including all you lurkers and newcomers, I hope you enjoy Part I! _

_As always, there will be a glossary of terms and notations at the end. :)_

_**Warnings:**__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled, then read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Disclaimer:**__ Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Part I

Raven Ehtar

…

"Nerd!"

A pair of hands, large as plates from the feel of them, shoved Ryou hard from behind. It took him by surprise and he landed badly with a yelp of pain, dropping the figure he'd been holding, cracking one knee into the pavement and scraping the heel of one of his hands. He whimpered at the pain and made a quick grab for the figure he dropped, trying to keep it safe and out of sight, but someone else was quicker. A grubby hand snatched it away and brought it before the sneering face of another boy.

"What's this, nerd?" Standing over Ryou was a ten-year-old with a fat face named Taro. He peered at the figure he held between two fingers, squinting his already tiny eyes to make out the details.

Ryou flinched. Not from the name calling, he was far too used to that to be much affected by it anymore. But it upset him to see his precious figurine in Taro's uncaring grip. It was a new one, one of the rarest kinds for his new tabletop game. He knew it would be a bad idea to bring something so valuable to school, but he just couldn't bear to leave it at home. It had to stay close to him. So he'd slipped it into a pocket, only intending to touch it now and then to assure himself it was there, like a good luck charm. But then… no one had seemed to be near or looking his way… and he'd just wanted to take a quick look…

And now he was on the ground, knee and hand stinging terribly, and Taro holding the figure as though it were something a cat had just finished with, his piggy eyes glinting malevolently.

"It's just a figurine," he mumbled, not looking Taro in the eye in case he took it as defiance. He held out a hand, the one he scraped on the pavement. "Please give it back."

Taro's face screwed up even further with the effort of thought. "A figurine? Like an action figure?"

Ryou opened his mouth to agree, hoping the term 'action figure' might save it from whatever horrid fate was developing Taro's puny brain. Before he could get a word out, however, another familiar voice interrupted. "No, Taro, not an action figure."

Dread filling him, Ryou turned his head to see Suichi, a boy a year older than Taro in body and about five or so in intelligence. He looked down at Ryou and smirked, the expression weirdly incompatible with his innocent baby face. "That would be far too cool for this loser," he said sweetly. He walked past Ryou toward his flunky and pretended to examine the hostage miniature closely. "See, look," he pointed, causing Taro to squint further. "If it were a real action figure, then it would have moving parts. Besides, who ever heard of an action figure in a dress?"

Taro threw his head back and laughed, Suichi's smirk widened and Ryou dropped his head, his face burning. "It's not a dress," he muttered into the ground. "They're wizard's robes…"

"A dress!" Taro crowed at the top of his voice, ignoring Ryou's quiet denial. "Baby Bakura plays with dolls in dresses! Not just a nerd, a prissy-boy nerd!" He continued to laugh, seeming not to notice when Suichi took the toy out of his hand.

"Nooo…" He came close to Ryou, so his shoes were right under the younger boy's nose. "I think it's a little worse than that." Suichi crouched down, his face inches away from the top of Ryou's head, who refused to look up. He couldn't see the older boy's face, but he felt as a handful of his white hair was held in a deceptively soft grip and braced himself. "I think maybe the long haired prissy-boy is actually a long haired prissy-_girl_. What do you think, prissy-girl?"

Ryou didn't answer, just stared at the gray pavement scattered with sharp gravel between his hands. He was relieved that all of this was happening around the side of the building, out of sight of the rest of the school. It was why he had come this way in the first place, to take that one, furtive look at the miniature in his pocket, was because no one was likely to catch him at it. Taro and Suichi must have seen him sneak away and followed him. Of course, now fewer people meant that the chance of rescue was practically nil.

He concentrated entirely on the tiny world between his hands, on how sharp-edged pebbles pressed into his palms, and how the scrapes to his hand and his knee throbbed in time with his pulse. He did his best to tune out the itchiness of his eyes, the sound of Suichi's breathing, Taro's chortles, and the feel of his hair being held.

Pain flared across Ryou's scalp as Suichi suddenly twisted and pulled his hair. "I asked you a question, Bakura. Do you think you're a girl or a boy?" The boy's voice, despite what he was doing, didn't change from its pleasant tenor.

Ryou grit his teeth to keep from making any noise. He wasn't sure, but he had the feeling that if he made any sort of protest Suichi would only make it worse for him. When he thought he could speak without his voice betraying just how much it hurt, he said, "Not a girl. I'm a boy."

"Are you sure?" Suichi tugged sharply at the handful of white strands.

Ryou grunted. He was sure he could feel some of his hair coming loose with all the pulling Suichi was doing. "Yes," he managed.

The pressure eased off, and the older boy's voice became even sweeter, as sweet as candy. "Well then, if you're a boy, then you shouldn't be playing with toys like this, should you?"

Ryou tilted his head to the side so he could see Suichi's face without ripping out an entire handful of hair. Suichi's face was the very picture of childish innocence, with round cheeks and warm brown eyes that crinkled in their corners. Teachers and parents both would coo over him and his charming little smile, but Ryou and a few others knew what a fake it really was. They saw how he used his sweet exterior to hide his sour interior, how he would mask his cruelties with a darling face. Boys like Taro couldn't get away with nearly as much, just because they such angelic features. Whereas Suichi could do as he liked and walk away unscathed because no one could believe such a charming boy could do anything malicious.

Looking up at him from his place on the hard concrete, Ryou could believe it. And not because a good portion of his hair was still balled up in the boy's fist. It was Suichi's eyes. Those warm, deep brown eyes did not smile or lighten. Those eyes were flat and empty, and filled Ryou with more dread than any amount of snarling or threats could ever achieve.

With Ryou's gaze on him, Suichi dangled the stolen figurine before his eyes. With Tarp still standing close and restricted by the grip in his hair, Ryou dared not make a grab for it. "Dolls aren't good toys for a big boy like you to play with," he mocked.

Ryou didn't respond. There was nothing he could think of to say that wouldn't just make his situation worse. Suichi gave his hair another twist, earning a flinch from Ryou, and then tossed the toy back to Taro, who caught it with a slight fumble. The larger boy waved the miniature at Ryou, pulling a face at him over Suichi's shoulder.

"Taro," Suichi spoke to him, still staring straight at Ryou. "Bakura here doesn't need that girl's toy anymore. Break it."

"No!" Ryou jerked in Suichi's grip, tearing free even more hair and starting tears in his eyes. He didn't escape; his hair was only yanked harder to keep him still. "Don't break it, it's rare! Just… give it to someone else, or throw it away. But don't break it!"

"Now, now," Suichi soothed, his tone all honey to hide the barbs. "If we do that, then who's to say that you won't find a way to get it back? We can't have that, now, can we?"

"Can't have that," Taro echoed and chuckled as though it were a great joke. While Ryou watched, Suichi shifting to a side to give him a clear view, Taro dropped the figure to the ground and brought down a heavy foot on top of it. It was a rare figurine, but it was made of PVC, not lead, and it crunched readily beneath the sole of Taro's shoe. The large boy ground the pieces of Ryou's broken figure into the gravel with relish.

Suichi, still wearing his gentle, empty-eyed smile, shook his fingers free of Ryou's hair. With his figure already destroyed, it hardly mattered anymore, and Ryou didn't move once he was released. "I think that's enough for now."

The small sounds of PVC being crunched into ever smaller pieces suddenly ceased. "That's all?" Taro didn't even attempt to conceal the disappointment in his voice.

Suichi stood, and brushed off his hands against his slacks, stepping away from the still form of Ryou. "Of course. We are his friends, after all, just looking out for his best interests. It wouldn't do to have our friend walking around with a girl's toy. Or bruises," he added pointedly.

Anyone watching Taro's face as he worked out the implications of what Suichi said would have seen comprehension lighting up his face like a slow dawn over mountainous countryside. "Uh, right. So…"

"So we will be going back inside to attend our classes," Suichi supplied. "It's nearly time and it wouldn't do to be late."

Taro hesitated, his brow crinkling with worry as he looked at Ryou, who refused to rise to his feet while the other two remained. Suichi followed his gaze and smirked. "Don't worry about Bakura, Taro. I'm sure he can find his own way in, and he wouldn't dream of troubling anyone inside with our little chat."

Ryou didn't bother replying aloud, but rather bowed his head further, refusing to look up at his two tormentors staring down at him. Despite the valiant effort he was putting forth to keep from showing any further weakness for them to exploit, tears were on the verge of spilling onto his cheeks. Even digging his teeth into the inside of his cheek wasn't doing much to stop them. Looking up with a face like that would only give his bullies even more ammunition. Not that they needed more.

The sound of receding footfalls came as a relief to Ryou; the light, almost silent steps of Suichi and the heavier, uncaring set from Taro. Ryou finally allowed himself to relax, and sat back on his heels after sweeping the crushed and shattered model into his hands. Through the blur of unshed tears he stared down at the pieces of what had only a few minutes before been his most prized possession. It wasn't even the destruction of his rare figure that made his eyes fill with stinging tears and every breath a strain; it was how familiar this kind of scenario was becoming. It seemed that every day had at least one kind of incident, something more than just the taunts or sly kicks at his shins in the hallways, and the bully never seemed to catch any sort of punishment for it. Occasionally one would be caught in the act, but if they ever got more than a harsh word, then it was like as not to go even harder for Ryou the next time. Even without Suichi's subtle warning not to tattle, Ryou knew better than to try. There had been no witnesses, if any teachers confronted the two with this incident they would know exactly who would have ratted them out, and who to revenge themselves on. Ryou had already learned that lesson long ago.

If he'd had any friends it might have been different, but even those who didn't think of him as a hopeless introvert were reluctant to make friends with the human equivalent of a punching bag. If they did, who was to say that they wouldn't become targets by association? Ryou, rather than putting any effort into making friends, went out of his way to make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Why would Ryou put himself forward when attention of any kind usually turned out badly?

Ryou sniffled and pocketed the broken figurine; he might be able to salvage it, he told himself. He just didn't understand why playing certain kinds of games made him such a target for this kind of thing. So he liked to play tabletop role-playing games, was that really so unusual that it called for such ostracism? Or was it just something about him personally that made him such a perfect mark?

He wiped away the one tear that managed to escape, rubbing grit into his cheek and salt into his scraped palm, and felt the all too familiar hot knot of anger writhe in his belly. The tears were useless, as was the fury that caused them, but while he could stem the tears, he couldn't do the same with the fury. It just wasn't fair! Why should he be so miserably singled out and picked on? Why couldn't he be left alone?

When the bell sounded, calling in everyone from recess, Ryou was fairly sure he'd found all of the tiny pieces of his broken figure amongst the gravel. Any hope of repairs had been dashed effectively, but he still gathered them up and stowed them in his pocket, then hurried along inside with the press of other children.

…

"Ryou!" A small flying tackle aimed at his midsection swiftly followed the excited shout.

The air was knocked out of Ryou in a whoosh as he stumbled back, stopping abruptly when his back met the wall. Still holding onto one of his shoes he had been in the process of removing and clutching his book bag that had slipped from his shoulder, Ryou looked down at the dark head buried into his jacket at about the level of his ribs. "Hello to you, too, Amane," he said when he could draw breath again.

The head tilted back to reveal a bright, smiling face, remarkably similar to his own. Same snub of a nose, same small mouth, same shape to the deep nut-brown eyes, even the same pointed chin beneath the layer of baby fat that Amane had yet to grow out of. Only her hair was notably different, black as a starless midnight as his was white as fallen snow.

She grinned up at her brother widely, her smile only having recently recovered from a major gap after she lost two of her front teeth. He smiled back down at her wearily. "Nii-chan, nii-chan! Mama got us some new paints today, come play!" Amane bounced a little bit as she spoke, jouncing Ryou.

Normally Ryou would play with his little sister readily. There was a wide gap between their ages, he was nine and she was six, but he didn't mind playing games with her. So long as he kept his models out of her reach, there was never any conflict. But today he just wanted to be left alone. The run-in he'd had with Taro and Suichi had put a major crimp in his day, and that hadn't been the last incident before the last bell finally rang. When the time to pack up his books and change his shoes had come he'd counted up three more minor confrontations. Now he just wanted rest, to get his homework done and not think about school again until he had to.

"Not right now, Amane," he said, setting down his book bag carefully and trying to get her to let go. She clung to his tenaciously, refusing to be pried free.

"But nii-chaaaaaan...!" she pouted, squeezed him tighter when he tried to slip a hand under her arm to lever her away. "They're so pretty, and I want you to see what I painted already!"

Ryou sighed, shimmied around with Amane still attached to him, and sat on the lip of the _genkan_ to finish taking off his shoes. Amane couldn't hang on without taking a nose dive into the floor, so she let go and pouted at him. "I'll come and look later, okay? I'm hungry and have some homework to do first."

"But dinner won't be for hours, and your homework takes forever. Come look now and do your homework later."

He gave his sister a look over his shoulder. "Are we being bratty today, Amane-chan?"

The girl's expression was somewhere between the pout and being rebellious. Ryou remembered their mother giving that look a name once, what had it been? Ah, yes. 'Petulant'_._

"Nooooo," Amane said eventually, sounding every bit as though she wished she could say 'yes' and get away with it.

"Then let me get some things done first, okay? You know how important it is to get schoolwork done."

His sister nodded, downcast but no longer arguing. Seeing her crestfallen over something so small, some of Ryou's resolve melted, and he offered a compromise. "I'll see if Mama will let me have a snack, then do my math homework first, then come look at your pictures, okay? I'll finish the rest after."

Amane immediately brightened, nodded, and ran off to – Ryou assumed – set out the paintings she most wanted him to see.

Ryou smiled after his sister. At least he could depend on a friendly welcome from her after a less than enjoyable day at school. Kicking off the last shoe and setting it in its place, then pulling on his house slippers, the boy scooped up his bag and made his way to the kitchen. His mother, against expectations, wasn't there yet to start preparing the evening meal. Rather than seek her out to ask, he grabbed a small box of crackers out of the bottom cupboard. His mother usually insisted on their asking for between meal snacks, but he had noticed she didn't mind so much when it was a snack right after getting home, and as long as Amane didn't see him and pick up the same habit.

With his small prize, Ryou then made for one of the two little bedrooms at the back of the apartment. He was glad to have his own room, and knew how lucky he was to have one. His parents weren't rich, but they were comfortable enough. Even so, it was hard to find places with excess space like this. It was one of those little luxuries that they indulged in.

Walking down the short hallway that connected the living room with the two small bedrooms and the bathroom, he paused at the small hall table to stare at something that hadn't been there that morning. Beside the sky blue vase of orchids drooping their heavy heads and a wireless phone on its base was a small – tiny, really – yellowish box. Ryou's eyes narrowed, he bent to look at it more closely. Definitely a box, it looked as though it had been carved from some kind of stone, though the harder he looked, the more it looked like it was bone, or maybe even ivory, yellowed with age. It was carved all the way around with tiny elephants, complete with slender tusks and wrinkles at the knees, walking through grasses and reeds. There were no hinges, the lid was sized just so it fit over the lip of the box and made to be lifted away whole. It was an impressive piece, and very pretty.

It was also new to the apartment, and not the kind of thing his mother would buy on a whim.

Fresh, new anger suddenly rose inside him. Ryou stalked the rest of the way to his room, shutting the door behind him just shy of enough force to be a slam. His book bag was tossed into a chair, the crackers flung onto the desk, both appetite and initiative to begin his homework practically extinguished.

It wasn't as though the box were a strange item to find in his home. The apartment was scattered with similar, some were more detailed, some plainer, larger, and all of them from Egypt or very near. His and Amane's father was an Egyptologist, a fairly successful and prominent one who owned a museum somewhere in Japan. But he was also something of an adventurer, a scholar bitten with wanderlust that hadn't abated even after marrying and having two children. Rather than remaining in the country, overseeing the museum and sifting through the discoveries sent to him, he spent as much time in Egypt himself as he possibly could. It was a good year when he and Amane got to see their father for more than eight weeks out of fifty-two. To make up for it, he would send gifts, unique little finds that could make it through customs, as though baubles were an even trade-off.

Ryou's cheeks were hot, his hands balled into fists as he glared at nothing, rage running through his veins. The box was new, which meant it had arrived in the post that day. If there had been a delivery, then it meant his father didn't plan on coming home any time soon. If he did, he would have just brought the box with him rather than send it through the post. He wasn't coming home…

Ryou's birthday was in three days. He was turning ten this year, and his father had all but sworn in blood that he would be home for it. A promise that was obviously going to be broken.

It explained the new paints Amane was playing with. She had been looking forward to their father's visit as well, and while she might not understand the significance of the package from Egypt, their mother would. The paints were a pre-emptive peace offering. A peace offering for Amane, but none for him. Ryou ground his teeth; felt the four sharp semi-circles of his nails dig into each palm as his fists balled up even tighter. Not that he would have _accepted_ any kind of peace offering, but it might have been nice to have at least been _offered_ one.

He took a deep breath, shook out his hands, and forced himself to relax. The anger still lay there, waiting coiled in the pit of his belly like a serpent. He stood and breathed for a minute, trying to calm down, without much success.

This would make the fourth birthday of his that his father had been absent for that he could remember. Every year he sent apologies, increasingly elaborate presents, and increasingly ardent vows to be home in time for the next one. It was becoming as dependable a birthday tradition as cake. Unlike cake, though, his father's false promises and weak excuses only left a bitter taste in his mouth. What made it worse was how his mother only ever deemed it necessary to comfort Amane when their father failed to put in an appearance, even though Ryou could only remember one of her birthdays that he'd missed. He could understand that she was younger and needed more attention and explaining, but he was outright ignored. It was like she assumed her son needed no reassurances whatsoever. But then, that was fairly typical of her, to focus solely on her daughter, and leave the son to fend for himself.

When he felt like he could walk without stomping, Ryou went to his desk and began emptying out the book bag, stacking up texts neatly on one corner, using a tight self-control born from years of practice. The books were stacked so precisely he might have been using a straight edge. It was usually a sign of how irritated he was: the more self-control he had to use to keep his hands from shaking, the neater things around him became as a result. His room, he noted wryly, was nearly always immaculate.

It wasn't a very good beginning of the school term, he reflected. Worse than usual, in fact. Normally he had more time before the bullying began in earnest, at least a week, maybe two, before something like what happened with Taro and Suichi. They were starting early this year right along with the term. He wanted to believe that since they were beginning early they would ease off early, as well, but he seriously doubted it. More likely he had a very, very long year to look forward to.

If he had just one friend, then it might not be so bad. He didn't expect anyone to leap to his defense, but to have someone on his side at school, someone who he knew wasn't out to get him. He loved Amane, but she was hardly the source of support he needed. What he needed…

Sitting down at the desk, something stabbed into his hip. He yelped, jumped back up to his feet in surprise. There was nothing to be seen, but there was something in his pocket.

Ryou pulled out the handful of broken shards of plastic that had once been his rare RPG figurine. He'd forgotten he'd saved them. Laying them all out across the top of his desk, it quickly became apparent that it was unsalvageable. There were one or two pieces missing, despite how carefully he'd searched the gravel, but even if he'd gathered every scrap, some of the pieces of PVC were so warped as to be unusable. It would be impossible to try and repair.

For a while Ryou just stared at the pieces, considering sweeping them all into the garbage and forgetting all about it. Suddenly he stood, crossed the room and came back with a small tin box. Inside, when he opened it, were many, many more pieces of other broken figurines that, for one reason or another, he had saved rather than thrown away.

Fired up with a new drive and completely ignoring the tidy stack of textbooks at his elbow, Ryou began picking through his collection of broken figures. One figure by itself may not be salvageable, but surely there would be pieces here somewhere that would fit it…

…

"Happy birthday, nii-chan!"

"Happy birthday, Ryou."

Ryou smiled, trying to look as happy as he should for a boy reaching double digits. He felt rather guilty that he couldn't seem to muster any real enthusiasm. There was a cake, a good sized one for only three people to share, and balloons, an addition made at Amane's insistence, since a birthday just wasn't a real birthday without them. On the table he, Amane and their mother sat around were three presents, all wrapped in bright, patterned paper and topped with bows. Amane was barely managing to keep her seat, she was so wound up. A birthday was a birthday as far as she was concerned, no matter if it was hers or not. Their mother, Noriko, sat and smiled as she looked over her two children. She was still young for a woman with two kids, though there were the beginnings of fine lines at the corners of her mouth and her black eyes. Her hair, though, was still auburn through and through, with no touch of gray. She had done what she could to make this little party as cheerful as possible, it was her touch that made the gifts so perfectly wrapped, the cake so carefully frosted.

Yet all Ryou could see was the fourth side of the table, conspicuously empty of his father, and how echoingly bare the whole apartment felt with only the three of them celebrating. He could remember past birthdays when there had been friends, but that had been some time ago. This just felt forced, even the balloons, like they were all pretending it was a happy occasion, but knew it wasn't.

Still, he tried to smile.

"Thank you," he said, and then wondered what else there was to say.

He was saved from having to think about it by Amane, who threatened to bounce right off of her _zabuton_, squeaking, "Open your presents! Open your presents!" She had been a little upset when their father hadn't appeared, but the disappointment had melted away quickly enough with the prospect of cake.

Noriko smiled and put a gentle hand over her daughter's to settle her down. "Hush, Amane, he will. Be patient." She smiled at Amane, who pouted at her mother but she stopped bouncing. The elder woman turned to Ryou with the same smile, eyes crinkled and warm. "Which one would you like to open first?"

Conscious of Amane watching him, he looked over the three gifts and made a show of thinking, as though it were a difficult decision. He held his chin and squinted at the presents, tilting his head. "I don't know…" After a minute, he looked at his sister, who was near to bursting a gasket and cracked a tiny smile. "Which do you think, Amane?"

This time the girl did come up from her _zabuton_, throwing off her mother's hand and seizing upon the smallest of the gifts, a little bigger than his hand, and wrapped in bright pink paper with a white bow. "This one, this one!"

Ryou took it and raised an eyebrow at the girly wrapping. "Is this one from you?"

Amane nodded proudly, grinning from ear to ear.

Ryou chuckled and carefully unwrapped the gift, pulling up each bit of tape and undoing each fold. Inside was a small mirror, much like the kind women used to apply makeup, but with a handmade frame, decorated with painted flowers and lopsided blobs that might have been butterflies. The face that looked back at him from the confines of that cheerful frame looked happy.

"Do you like it? I made it at school last week!" Instead of bouncing, now Amane was leaning toward her brother in concentration, trying to read his reaction.

He smiled at her. "Of course I do, it's very pretty. You did a wonderful job."

"Yay! I thought so!" Amane left her seat to fling her arms around Ryou's neck and give him a little kiss on the cheek. "Happy birthday, nii-chan!"

Mindful of the mirror in his hand as he did so, Ryou hugged her back.

Once the first gift was unwrapped, and the tension of waiting for her brother to see the fruits of all her labors at the kindergarten dissipated, Amane settled down. The next gift, from his mother, wrapped in blue and just as carefully unwrapped as the first, proved to be a set of modeling paints and small brushes. Perfect for the figures that he liked to paint himself, a very practical gift that he had pointed out to her a couple of weeks before. Much better than the extra school supplies he normally got.

And then there was only one gift to go. Ryou stared at it a moment, wondering if her even wanted to touch it. Just looking at it, a flattish square wrapped in rust colored paper and a gold bow, reminded him of all of his anger. It was hard to see that present as anything other than an apology, a bribe to forgive and forget his father's continued absence. Opening it would be accepting it, accepting it would be like saying it was alright his father never showed any interest in him. That it didn't hurt and that he didn't care.

Noriko, seeing him hesitate, slid the package down to him. "And this one is from your father, Ryou," she said, a note of hope in her voice.

Ryou didn't touch it. A flat, rough square, it was about twice the size of Amane's gift, and two inches high. It was so plain, but Ryou hated it intensely. He looked up from the rust package to the empty side of the table. It was no replacement for who was meant to be here.

Noriko correctly guessed the track of her son's thoughts and interjected herself into them. "He sent a letter along with the present, Ryou. He's sorry he couldn't make it for your birthday; there's been some important find in the Theban Hills. He hopes to have everything wrapped up to where he can leave in a month or two."

The boy didn't respond. It was the same excuse he heard every year, only the details ever changed. Something came up somewhere, something more important than his family waiting at home that kept him in Egypt, digging through the dust of centuries. Rather than taking time to know his son, he sent back curios centering on his own interests. It really was all he knew, Ryou supposed. The people he tried the hardest to know were hundreds of years dead, most of his days spent bent over tiny chisels and brushes, hunting out secrets.

When he finally reached for the last present, Noriko relaxed visibly. Even Amane seemed a little relieved. Ryou was so careful and slow in unwrapping this gift that he doubted the tape he pulled free even left marks on the paper. Inside was a box he recognized as the kind jewelry was normally put in. The corners were rounded and the surface was soft, almost velvety, and the size was right for a necklace. Curiosity peaked in spite of himself; Ryou found the front of the clamshell box and pried it open.

He gasped aloud when he saw what was waiting inside.

A golden, gleaming eye was staring back out at him from the darkness, glinting in a ray of sunlight that sneaked in. Opening the box further, the watching eye became a simple design, set in the center of an upright triangle of metal. Both eye and triangle were caught in the center of a hollow ring of more metal, from which hung five, freely swinging pieces, each tapering to wickedly sharp points. And all of it was wrought from – what looked like – gold.

Ryou didn't notice that Amane had come beside him close when he hadn't said anything until she cooed and reached out a hand to touch one of the points. "Pretty… What is it?"

"I don't know," Ryou admitted, looking up at his mother. She shrugged.

"All he said about it in his letter was that he had found it in an out-of-the-way stall in the Theban Hills and that when he saw it, it seemed like it was meant just for you."

Ryou frowned at the explanation, but didn't give it too much thought. Instead he found himself staring at his new, golden – _was it __**really**__ gold?_ – acquisition, trying to puzzle out what it could be. The ring that held all of the various pieces together wasn't completely smooth, he noticed. There were small, interlocking loops that attached the points to the ring, and on either side of these loops were ridges of metal that wrapped all the way around the ring. At the apex of the triangle there was a sixth loop, slightly larger than the rest, but no point attached to it. All of the points were evenly spaced along the bottom half of the ring so they could hang, why one at the top? A place where the whole piece could be hung from, maybe?

Ryou ran a finger over the empty loop.

He blinked.

The metal was cold.

Of course, it made sense for the metal to be cold. Why did it seem strange that it would be? And just a second ago, something had seemed… off. What had it been?

Ryou jumped when his mother put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up into her smiling, yet empty face. "Time for cake?"

He looked down at the golden ring, feeling uneasy for some reason. He put it down to the eye that made it look as though he were being watched as much as doing the watching. He snapped the box closed and nodded. "Yes. Cake sounds good."

…

Ryou shut the door of his bedroom behind him and leaned against it with a sigh. Who knew that pretending to be happy could be so exhausting? The cake had been good, and watching a film with mother and sister had been pleasant enough. Dinner had been delicious and Ryou had stuffed himself freely, and playing with his sister was a welcome alternative to the homework still waiting on his desk. Still, it was tiring to go through it all acting as bright and cheerful as possible. In the end, he felt like he had done more to make sure _they_ had a good day than the other way around.

He went around the room, putting away his gifts. The paints and brushes went into a drawer of his desk, next to the supplies he already had for his model making. The mirror and its bright little frame went on his bedside table. And the box with the golden ring and eye, after a minute of careful consideration, was very deliberately flung against a wall, where it struck with a loud thump and a protesting rattle from the odd object inside.

His father thought he could be mollified with shiny toys? That his affection could be so easily secured with bits of metal? Did he mean so little to the man that this was all he was worth? Not worth time away from his precious sand dunes or bits of broken pottery, or the focus it would require to just sit and _talk_ for a little while, no. But useless curiosities, of the same kind he sent home every month; _those_ were what Ryou amounted to, now. A trinket.

Ryou sat down at his desk, dug out the little figurine that he'd been slowly repairing over the last few days. Having something to do with his hands would help calm him down, and he was nearly finished. He could finish it tonight if he tried. Though, to be fair, 'repair' was an optimistic term for what he'd had to do with the model. It was more like complete reconstruction, using not only pieces of the rare figure, but plenty from other figures as well. The result so far was odd, but interesting. He took out his glues, tweezers, a pair of strong scissors for trimming and a small spool of cord to tie the pieces that needed a few minutes before the glue set and dug into the project with a will.

As he worked he let his mind wander, his thoughts eventually streaming easily from one subject to the next without ever stopping to concentrate on any particular one. Putting together models, even ones that didn't fit together properly, didn't require a lot of thought, and he'd done so many before his fingers worked at the tiny pieces and tools automatically. He thought about the hobby shop two streets down where he got nearly all of his games, figures and so forth from and thought about their newest sets that had come in earlier that week. That led to thinking about the rumors he'd heard about the newest tabletop RPG set to come out before the end of the year, called Monster World. The few pictures he had seen of the different interlocking board pieces, scenery and building props you could get had nearly set him drooling. He itched to play that game. Though, that would require someone to play _with._ He doubted his mother would be interested, Amane wouldn't have the patience, and neither of them would be likely to grasp the mechanics.

To play, he would have to call on someone closer to his own age who might be interested in RPG's. He tried to think of anyone he knew who would be willing to play if he got a board. It was a short list. So far as he knew, no one at his school liked to play games that didn't involve a controller or running after balls, even if anyone were on speaking terms with him. There were a few people at the hobby shop that he had spoken to, but none of them were his age, all of them being in middle school or higher, and unlikely to want to play with someone as young and poorly skilled as he was. He could assemble and paint the accessories reasonably well because he'd had plenty of practice at that, but almost none at actual gameplay. It didn't stop him from thinking up scenarios for future games, though. That was almost as much fun as assembling the playing pieces.

_Let's see,_ he thought, laying a tiny line of glue. _Let's start with a simple warrior who, unknown to him, is under the influence of a curse…_

The figure, with much of the tricky parts done in the days before, came together quickly under his hands as Ryou thought out the main plot points for a protagonist who's main enemy was the product of some evil sorcerer's experiment. It was quite involved, and even some of the protagonist's friends would end up fighting against him, believing they were doing the right thing. Ryou almost wished he'd written it all down, but then, the opportunity to use it would probably never come, so it hardly mattered.

The last piece fitted into place with a little _click_. The glue still wet, Ryou carefully set it on one of the shelves above his desk to let it dry and give it a good, critical look.

It was very, very obvious that what he was looking at was the product of more than one model glued together, but not because it was haphazard or broken looking. He had been careful to use pieces from figures about the same overall size, but the styles and colors were different so there was no mistaking it for anything other than a mixture. In one or two places he'd had to trim and shape pieces until they fit their neighbors, but he noticed that those joins were where it was hardest to tell where one ended and the next began. Ryou was proudest of the face, though. That in itself was a combination of three separate models. It now looked back at him using the eyes of two different miniatures and smiled at him with the mouth of a third, and the overall shape of the head was perfect.

It was a strange composite figure, made up of bits he never would have thought would go together, but it all worked out to an interesting piece. One of a kind, that was certain. He would have to think of an intriguing RPG scenario to go along with it.

With that done, there was only homework left to do before bed. Just a page of math… but he really didn't want to try crunching numbers. It was getting late and he objected to math on birthdays.

While deciding whether to sit and work on his paper or to get up early and do it in the morning, an itch started to develop between his shoulder blades. The ticklish feeling of being watched crept over him and made him turn, expecting to find… something.

The velvet box he had thrown against the wall, still laying where it had fallen to the floor, was all that met his eyes. He didn't know why, but even with the lid firmly closed, it still seemed to be watching him, waiting.

Telling himself that it was stupid and untidy to just leave it on the floor, and that that was why he couldn't stand to leave it there, Ryou walked to it and picked it up. Even knowing what to expect this time, it was still weird to find a metallic eye staring out at him from the gloomy interior of the box. It took him a minute of staring at the thing before he reached in to touch it again.

The metal was still cold to his fingertips, and smooth. There was an odd quality to it, unlike the metal of his mother's pots and pans, a kind of liquid, buttery feel, like the metal was wet. But it was dry, Ryou rubbed his fingers together to make sure, and they showed no sign of moisture. Maybe it was just a property of the metal.

Could it really be gold? Surely not. His father wouldn't have spent so much for a present for a ten-year-old boy. Did gold even feel… like this thing felt? He didn't know, he'd never had a chance to feel it. He assumed gold felt the same as any other metal. No, this wasn't gold. Probably. Though it was heavy for its size, and he was pretty sure that _was_ one of the properties of gold. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered about the ring. Where had his father found it, what was it supposed to be, did it have some symbolic significance, were there other pieces like this one, what had possessed his father to purchase it in the first place, much less send it to his young son, thousands of miles away?

Ryou picked it up by the empty loop at the top and held it in front of his eyes. The points jangled, cutting the light to ribbons and tossing them to the dark corners of the room. The eye set in the center of the triangle gleamed a flickered, giving the thing an almost sentient appearance.

Ryou blinked, tore his eyes away from the thing. Strange how it almost felt like he was having a staring contest with it.

He put the ring down on the desk and unwound a length of cord from his spool. It wasn't until he had tied the two ends together, forming a loop, and was threading it through the ring's empty top loop that he wondered why.

The answer came as soon as he formed the question: So he could wear it like a necklace, of course. It was best suited as a pendant, wasn't it?

Ryou looked at it, the cut and tied cord already being tugged into place by his hands, which seemed to move with a mind of their own. It must have been a little something left over from working on the figure. A part of him was still functioning on auto. He supposed it _did_ rather look like an ornate pendant. It was better than any other possible purpose he could think of.

There was just enough slack in the cord to slip over his head when he tugged, and the makeshift necklace and its pendant settled into place around his neck.

The ring really was very heavy, and the cord was too thin, it cut into the back of his neck. He looked down, trying to see how it looked on him. It hung right over his sternum, the points descending a little lower, but other than that, it was impossible to tell. Well, Amane's mirror would solve that. Holding the little hand mirror out to see as much of himself as possible, Ryou studied his reflection.

It looked, if he were to judge, absolutely ridiculous. The pendant itself looked nice enough, it just looked ridiculous on _him_. The pendant was large as well as gaudy, whereas he was relatively small for his age, and not the kind of person who could carry off 'gaudy' very well. Besides, what would a boy be doing wearing something like this? Suichi and Taro rose uncomfortably close in his memory.

He sighed, and moved to put the mirror down. Something in the reflection moved behind him. He whipped around, the ring clattering, his heart suddenly thudding in his ears, eyes darting back and forth, searching.

There was nothing there. But he'd been sure that he'd seen something in Amane's mirror. He looked back into the glass. It was getting dark outside and he hadn't switched his light on yet, so maybe it was just a trick of the shadows. It must have been a trick. Because it had looked, just for a moment, like a face.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all. He chuckled at himself, the sound too loud and forced to his own ears. Trying to convince his heart to slow, the ring clinked. Outside the wind whispered at his window.

Someone touched his hair.

Ryou flipped around, clapping his hands to his head. Again, no one was there and he was left feeling childish, jumping at shadows. Except he _knew_ it couldn't just be his imagination. Someone had brushed their fingers across the back of his hair. Just enough to send a shiver down his spine.

His breath was too fast and harsh. The wind outside gusted, rattling his window in its frame. The ring at his chest jingled. Nothing else made a noise. He strained his ears, trying to catch the smallest of noises, anything to give away the presence of… what? What was he expecting to hear?

He slapped at his own cheek. It had felt like a bug was crawling on him, a spider or an ant. But there was nothing on his hand. The sensation didn't leave, it only spread, creeping over his face, down to his mouth and lips. It felt as though a nest of ants were trying to crawl into his mouth, his nose and ears and back into his hair.

Wiping frantically at his face, Ryou backpedaled until his back hit a wall, trying to get away from the feeling of invading insects, slapping at his own face, hardly registering when the feeling of his hair being touched returned.

He stumbled forward, intending to run from the room and find his mother, to get some kind of help, when he was punched. With an invisible car.

Ryou's world suddenly centered on his chest, which felt like it had been crushed. His lungs refused to draw in air, his heart seemed to have stopped completely.

Ryou looked down at his chest, which for some reason was beginning to ache. He didn't see what the problem was at first. Nothing looked out of place, he couldn't understand why everything felt so wrong? Then the feeling of 'wrong' resolved into sharp, searing pain, and he saw the bright red stains seeping through the fabric of his light blue shirt.

He hadn't noticed at first because he wasn't used to the ring, but something was missing.

All five of the hanging points of the ring were missing. And as the stains spread, he realized that they had ripped through the shirt and plunged deep into his chest.

...

_**A/N2:**__ For this chapter, and most likely many chapters in the future, I'm working on creating an outright horror feeling. It's a somewhat new challenge for me. I've done plenty of creepy atmospheres, (which varied success rates), but this is the first time trying for outright horror. I'd appreciate any feedback on how that's turning out. Help me improve, folks! :D_

_Suichi:__ I usually pick background character names based on their meanings, and this one is no different. It means 'one lord', perfect for a little rabble rouser, don't you think? I picture Suichi becoming a true terror when he gets older. Like if Seto were outright evil and malicious. _

_Taro:__ And this name meanings 'plump son; first son'. I'm not sure, but my thought is that in the olden days to be the eldest son meant you were more likely to get the most / best portions of food, so the meanings of plump and first are really interchangeable. How I see it, anyway._

_Noriko:_ _I actually didn't look this name up before settling on it. It was one of those that just came naturally. For those interested, Noriko apparently means 'law, order'. …I guess how I could see it fitting anyway. :)_

_Amane:__ Amane, for those who don't already know, is __not__ an invention of mine. Ryou having a younger sister is completely canon, as is her name. We're never told how old she is in relation to Ryou, so yes, that's my own detail. For those who do know about her and know what's going to happen to her… yeah, we'll get there. Don't spoil it for everyone else, just in case. Oh, and Amane means 'sound of the Heavens'. _

_Ryou's Father:__ So far as I am aware, we never see Ryou's father in canon (manga, not anime), nor do we know his name. But we do know that he is an Egyptologist and works in Egypt at least some of the time.__  
>- Owns a Museum:<em>_ I remember finding it mentioned somewhere that the museum where the stone tablet was in the Millennium World arc was actually owed by Ryou's father. Now that I'm trying to find that particular reference I can't find it. If I'm wrong, please let me know and cite a source for me? This detail will stay, regardless, but I'd rather not keep this misapprehension for future fics._

_Origin of the Ring:__ This is one instance where I am using a detail from the anime. In the anime (I don't remember what episode, sorry) we see that Ryou's father found the ring in Egypt at a random stall. There was something about how the ring was sold to him as being related to Duel Monsters and that Ryou's father thought it would be perfect for his son… I'm ignoring the Duel Monsters detail (because it's silly) and keeping the rest of it. It fits in well enough with the rest of the manga canon. _

_Ryou's Age:__ Okay… here's where my obsessive nature is going to show through a little. Prepare thyself, it's going to be scary. I wanted Ryou to have the Ring for as long as possible, making him as young as possible and still fit the established canon. In Volume 8, Duel 73 we see that when Pegasus went to Egypt he saw a thief, (in Kul Elna), with the Millennium Ring, who was caught by Shadi and a few other robed people. The thief was taken away to be judged, (and was killed by the Ring), while Pegasus watched. He was of course caught and got the Millennium Eye out of the deal, but he went to Egypt a few months after his wife died, which was seven years before the time in the manga. We're assuming that most of the young heroes are aged sixteen at the beginning of the series, which if true, would put Ryou at about nine when Pegasus was in Egypt and when – as seen – the Ring was still there as well. Giving it a little time for his father to find it and ship it, having it arrive in time for Ryou's tenth birthday seems reasonable. That all make sense?_

_Of course, all that means that Ryou will have had the Ring for six years by the time he meets up with Yugi and the rest… but then, Yugi will have had the Puzzle for eight. Longer, but then, he won't have had any contact with his item's spirit until the very end of that time. Think it'll make a difference? ;D_

_Theban Hills:__ The Theban Hills is an area on the west side of the Nile, opposite of Thebes, and is an area near to Qurna, which is, if everyone remembers, is the real-life village I'm using as reference for Kul Elna._

_Zabuton:__ A _zabuton_ is the Japanese cushion used for sitting. I was just going to use the term 'cushion' for these, but thought that was a little too generic. A _zabuton_ is something very specific, so I'm using the specific term._

_Genkan:__ A _genkan_ is the traditional Japanese entryway where shoes are taken off and traded for house slippers. Yes, you could call it a mudroom… but really, a mudroom doesn't have the same purpose or rules as a _genkan_. So that term stays as well._

_Nii-chan:__ Mentioned in the prologue why this term was staying, so I'm not repeating the reasoning, but it's an affectionate way of saying 'older brother'. __  
>- No 'imouto-chan'?:<em>_ So if I used the term _nii-chan_ for older brother, why haven't I used _imouto-chan_ for younger sister? From what I understand, saying _imouto-chan_ is a very silly way of saying 'little sister', more to be used if you're teasing – like saying little-widdle sister, if I understood it right. So for the affectionate term for Amane, we're just using Amane-chan. :)_

**_Thanks for reading everyone! Not sure when the next chapter will be up, but I'll see you then! _**


	3. Part II

_**A/N:**__ I am so proud of this chapter… and yet nervous about it as well. I like to write about places / situations that you don't ever see in real life. Dreamscapes, hallucinations and the like. The problem with writing these kinds of things is that, by their very nature, they're hard to describe. Trying to capture the feel of it all accurately enough so the audience can follow along without getting lost, but not giving so much detail that we drop out of 'dreamscape' into 'really weird looking funhouse'. That's what the majority of this chapter is, so heads up on that one._

_Other than that… we see the true beginnings (for this fic) of Bakura and Ryou's 'partnership'! This is so exciting for me, you guys, you have no idea. I have so much planned for this fic, how everything develops for them, how it affects them and Ryou's outside relationships in particular, and then at the end when they inevitably separate… Writing the details of their coming together, I can't help but plot out details for the reversal… and it's gonna be brutal. So. Painfully. Brutal. I love it. XD_

_Thank you my readers for sticking through the long gaps between chapters. I appreciate forever your patience, and work hard to make sure every moment is worth it. (HEARTS!)_

_**Warnings: **__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled, then read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Disclaimer: **__Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Part II

Raven Ehtar

…

The world had disappeared, and resolved itself to a few bright pinpoints of sensation. The cold floor pressing into his cheek. The thunder of his heartbeat, fluttery and erratic as a bird's. The smell, the taste of blood, metallic and cloying. Struggling to swallow, to breathe, to scream, but his throat ignoring every command. His hand, lying limp and inert only inches away, it seemed like a mile. Looming largest of all, reducing all else to a mere inconvenience, the sea of agony at his chest. Sharp, foreign things moved under his skin, scraping and clicking over his ribs. The sound they made he felt all the way down to his toes.

Ryou opened his mouth to call for help, but nothing would come out. He tried to move, to fold his legs under him, get up, rip the ring off and throw it to the farthest corner, but all that resulted were a few scattered muscle twitches. It was like he no longer commanded his own body. Under the agony of the ring's points burrowing into his flesh was the increasingly desperate need for air.

_I'm going to die,_ he realized with terrible clarity. He wondered if it would be from lack of oxygen or if the ring, alive and murderous, would find and crush his heart first.

Distantly, Ryou felt a tear slide down his face.

Suddenly sweet, sweet air filled him. He could draw breath, and did once, twice, but just as he was prepared to cry out his throat closed up again tighter than ever. Ryou would have panicked more, except he was no longer focused on breathing. He was no longer focused on his body at all.

Like a strange kind of film, old memories were rising up before his eyes, taking up all of Ryou's senses. Sight, smell, feel, sound, even thought, he was abruptly reliving small snippets of his past, all jumbled together in a confused tangle of perception. He would have welcomed it as a change from the nightmare reality he'd just been living, except these recollections were far from painless. Guilt, anger, resentment, betrayal, shame; emotional pain was taking the place of physical. Those little agonies he'd hoped were long dead and buried were all fresh as the day they occurred and tearing into him with its old delight.

Ryou wondered if this is what they meant by 'your life flashing before your eyes'…

It couldn't have been so long before he noticed what was different, what was strange in all these memories, though it felt like he'd relived his entire life twice through. There was someone… _something?_... else there with him. Some foreign presence, just as the ring was invading his body, was invading his mind. He didn't know how he knew, for he certainly couldn't _see_ it, it was more like feeling the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when someone was watching you. It told him that he was not alone, and after a moment, he could tell where it was and what it was doing.

This strange presence was rooting through his memories, traipsing through as they streamed past, picking them up one by one, prodding at them, picking them apart and dissecting them down to nothing. In doing so, whatever it was forced Ryou to relive it all more intensely than ever before, those past shames and mistakes of his all torn afresh and examined by one who cared for nothing of the pain it inflicted. Whatever it was didn't even seem to be aware of Ryou.

It was too much to endure. Ryou couldn't—didn't know how to fight against a phantom in his brain, so he tried to hide. Gathering up as many of those gauze-like recollections as he could, he tried to curl himself around them, to stay as small, silent and unnoticeable as possible. Even his thoughts he tried to keep from wandering, lest they draw attention.

The invader was not fooled. He found Ryou in less than a heartbeat, now enraged at Ryou's attempted defiance, and ripped into his mind with more brutality than before. Whatever protection Ryou had thought he could offer was shredded alongside his resolve.

.

. .

. . .

. . . .

. . . . .

. . . .

. . .

. .

.

He was exhausted. He didn't know how long it had been since this nightmare had begun, or if it was truly a nightmare or some horrible new reality. It all seemed too terrible to be real, but too real to be fantasy. Either way, it was what he was living through now, it was _his_ reality, and it had left him hollow as an egg. He wasn't sure which it was that had exhausted him more, the struggle to keep what made him 'Ryou' private from whatever it was that roved his mind, or the pain that resulted from it. And in the end it had all been useless. It felt as though there were nothing that this invading mind did not now know about him, and yet he could still feel it, whatever it was, drifting around the edges, looking for something new to drag out into the open and examine.

And Ryou still fought, clutching at the memory of safety, of privacy in absence of anything else left to protect.

… _stop fighting me…_

Ryou's eyes, long forgotten with the rest of his body, flew open, darting wildly around from where he'd fallen to the floor, searching for the voice. He was alone. There was no one else in the room who could have spoken to him. Surprised to find that he could breathe once again, he took a deep breath, preparing to call out for his mother, his sister, anyone who could help…

… _Ryou…_

… and nearly choked at the sound of his own name.

No one in the room, he realized, but the 'something' in his mind. Now it was speaking to him. Ryou didn't try to answer the voice that whispered in his brain, only tossed his head and curled into a ball. Mentally, he tried to do the same, to become invisible.

… _relax… it only hurts because you resist…_

Ryou shook his head again, and felt his whole body begin to tremble. He wouldn't be fooled!

"_Ryou."_

The voice was so clear, so real to his ears, Ryou opened his eyes again. It was dark now, the sun had set since he had fallen to the floor and his light hadn't been turned on, so the whole room was cast in deep gloom. Through the shadows he thought he could see a pale hand very near his own. Like his hand it was slender and the same length. Even the shape of the nails and the way the wrist bent to follow the arm looked like his. Except… Ryou squinted. The edges of the person were fuzzy. Soft. Incomplete. He almost thought he could see through the stranger's hand to see the pattern of the floorboards beneath it. It hurt his eyes, trying to focus and resolve what he was seeing into something coherent.

Ryou followed the arm up and up with his eyes, past the wrist, forearm, and the hem of a soft cotton tee to the shoulder… The other's face was cast in deep shadow, obscuring his features so only part of a cheek, chin and the suggestion of a mouth could be seen. A few locks of hair, pale as his own, escaped into the small piece of light coming from his window.

The figure flickered, just for a second, and Ryou blinked, trying to convince himself it was an illusion. For just a second, the other's skin had transformed from moonlight pale to sun burned brown, his entire frame seemed to grow larger and firm, and then just as abruptly flickered back again.

"_Ryou,"_ the impossible apparition said. Ryou heard him speak, saw the vague suggestion that must be his mouth move, but he also heard the words in his mind, like an echo. _"Don't fight me anymore, and the pain will stop."_ The head tilted slightly, and Ryou thought he could make out a soft smile amid the darkness. _"And then you can sleep."_

It sounded so good, so deliciously wonderful that Ryou let his defenses halfway down before he thought not to. It was enough. The presence slipped past his shields and even further into Ryou's mind, to places he hadn't even known existed, searching, searching, searching.

Ryou almost slammed his shields, puny as they were, back into place at the renewal of that foreign touch. But at the mere thought of that a needle of pain lanced through his skull, making his body twitch. It was just as the other had said: struggle was what brought the pain, if he remained still and open then there was none. Whoever the other mind was, he was still roaming about, but now he seemed a little bit gentler.

Ryou made himself relax, to only be aware of it and not to interfere. Whatever was being done to him, it seemed the lesser of two available evils.

The other presence was definitely searching for something specific among Ryou's memories. He could sense it from the way they would be turned over and over like they were objects and the methodical way they were rummaged through. Ryou wondered what it was the other was looking for, how someone could possibly find a memory like he was doing, and why, but couldn't concentrate enough to work it out. He was too tired, his thoughts too sluggish and dream-like to focus properly. It didn't seem so important now that the pain was gone. He just wanted to rest awhile…

Another question nagged at him, though, kept him from welcome oblivion. More than what he wanted or why, _who_ was this other consciousness, and how did he get into his mind?

Slowly, he drug open eyes that had drifted to slits, but the glimpse he had hoped for of the one sitting next to him in the shadows was thwarted. He was gone. All Ryou could see now was his own hand, lying limp on the floor.

He let himself sink back down to that dreamlike place in his mind, but not so far as to lose consciousness completely. Much as he wanted to sleep, he wanted to know more about the other mind first, and it seemed the only way he would know that would be to be where he was, sorting through Ryou's deepest memories. He imagined himself standing at the other's shoulder, watching as he rifled through Ryou's past, and just as in a dream, the imagining of it made it so. He didn't notice Ryou at all, so concentrated was he on his task. He was treating Ryou's memories more carefully than before, but it was obvious he still wasn't finding what he wanted, and was becoming frustrated.

It was strange looking at him, because it was like seeing, but there was nothing visual to register at all. Nothing like color or shape to remember later, but he could still 'see' movement, emotion and attitude translated to him as expression and posture, when there was no face and no body to express.

"_What are you looking for?"_ he asked, all unmeaning to.

The other froze, and Ryou felt that he turned to look at him as his attention came to include him. For a moment, Ryou thought he might ignore the question, or pull away from him completely, but eventually he answered. _A memory,_ he said, the voice purely within Ryou's mind. _A memory of yours that is like one of mine._

"_Why?"_ Ryou asked, and became aware that he was speaking the word as much as thinking it.

Another pause. Then, _Convergence._

The single word explanation did nothing to dispel Ryou's confusion, but he accepted it anyway. In his current state he couldn't find the energy to ask the other to be plainer or to question who he was. Instead he allowed himself to drift away like a wisp of smoke, coiling between those memories of his that the other personality had already gone through. The way they were arranged, it was familiar and comforting, though he knew he had never been in this place before. He drifted, observing scenes as he passed until he came to a place he didn't recognize at all.

Touching it with what he imagined to be fingers, it felt solid, a wall of some kind… An edge, he realized a moment later. The edge of his mind and – he squinted through the barrier that really offered no blockage at all and saw the beginning of another mind on the other side. Instantly, he knew it must be that of the other presence. Who else's could it be? Without stopping to question the wisdom – or even the sanity – of what he was doing, he pushed at the edges of the barrier, searching for a way in.

The other remained unaware of what he was doing until Ryou found a small chink in the wall and began working at it, making it larger, big enough to slip through to the other side. Then suddenly the other was _there_, somehow gripping Ryou tightly, holding him away from the barrier and its tiny breach. _Stay out of there,_ he said, mental voice harsh.

Ryou twisted a little in that grip. _"Let me go, I can help."_

_Help?_ The other seemed surprised, derisive.

"_While you look through my memories, I can look through yours."_ It was a plan that appeared as of out of nowhere. Ryou had put no thought into it, but what else could he have intended by breaching the barrier? He became dimly aware of his mouth, miles away, shaping the words and forcing them out. But the other paid attention only to his thoughts, listening closely to the shape of them. _"Two can work faster than one."_

Neither the other nor Ryou had a physical presence, so Ryou felt more than saw the head tilt as the other considered. He wished there were faces to see, expressions to read as he waited.

Without warning Ryou was dropped, and fell through a barrier that no longer existed to plunge into a roiling sea of foreign memories. If he'd thought that having someone else rooting around in his mind was disorienting, being the one in someone else's was a hundred times worse. There was nothing familiar, nothing recognizable around him to hold onto as the life and experiences of another raged all around him, trying to impress an alien personality into him.

Desperately he clutched at the identity that was only 'Ryou', holding tightly to his own core as the storm of otherness threatened to whip it all away.

Just as his grip on his identity began to slip, the storm eased, then ceased. A perfect bubble of calm had formed around him, allowing him to breathe. He looked around, but couldn't find why the pressure had suddenly dropped away from him. He gave a mental shrug, deciding it wasn't important.

Carefully, Ryou stretched out into the other's mind, proceeding only as he became sure that the bubble or whatever it was would follow him. He started the slow search through strange memories for anything that felt familiar, that might match one of his own memories. It wasn't until Ryou began sifting through them that it occurred to him just how foreign the other was. These recollections were all bright, hard-edged things, like diamonds left in the sun. It felt like they could cut and burn at the same time when he held them. Ryou, now that he was offered a contrast, realized that his own memories were much gentler, like paper worn to a feathery softness. Memories with the weight, clarity and harshness of cut gems were strange. Nearly as strange as what the memories consisted of.

Ryou understood now why the other had such trouble finding a memory that would be similar to one of his own. They were from wildly different places. Different landscapes, cultures, circumstances, experiences, even the languages weren't the same. Ryou knew not a word as they were spoken in those memories, but he could understand the meaning of them, as one can in a dream. If he'd hoped to garner some deeper understanding of the other mind, however, he was disappointed. No matter how many memories he peered into, he never seemed to know any more than before.

He wasn't as methodical as the other, he knew. There were just so many to go through, their organization so obtuse and complex. How was he supposed to find anything?

Ryou wondered how the other was progressing, unconsciously reaching out to him, and was abruptly aware of him, though they remained separated. He was still searching, his frustration mounting under continued failure. In that frustration, Ryou felt an echo of what it had been before, that attacking _thing_ in his mind.

Watching him, Ryou felt himself come more awake, his body, long forgotten, sending him the twin discomforts of aches and cold. He felt a need rise up urgently, the need to question what was happening to him, to wonder if helping whatever had invaded his mind was the wisest course… when he noticed something.

Both of them, Ryou and the other, were only looking at the events contained within each memory. But they were so far apart in so many basic ways that no matter how similar a pair of events may begin, they would quickly diverge. That was where they were both failing.

But memories were more than bare events. The essence of memory was in the experience: the thoughts, sensations and emotions that went with them.

Ryou dove into the remembrances, now not only seeing them, but listening, tasting, smelling and feeling them as well. Swimming through a sea of crystalline recollection, Ryou lived a life not his own.

A long time passed before he found what he was looking for, and the memory that came under his fingers was an old one. If the other's most recent memories were like diamonds, all sharp edges and reflections, then this one was a diamond worn to a smooth, dull marble with time. Unlike its fellows, it was easy to hold. Ryou knew it was what he had been searching for as soon as he touched it. It was just a moment contained in that memory, but for that moment, everything aligned perfectly. There was an ache in his chest that went so deep even his shoulders felt it, there was a taste like salt, but bitter as well, and a scent that was vaguely metallic. There was a feeling of weakness in that memory, weakness and then exasperation and frustration brought on by that weakness, and anger against everything that existed, including himself. The tenor of everything was just so that as Ryou held the memory, it might as well have been himself living within it.

He didn't know the name of the other, somehow that and many details discovered in the gem-recollections slipped through his fingers as soon as he found them, but he still called into the void for him. A moment later and he was no longer alone.

Being apart from the other presence, he had forgotten how daunting he was. How his personality radiated and burned, so when it was focused on you, you felt the heat of it. _"Here,"_ Ryou said, holding out the memory uncertainly.

The other took it, studied it, and seemed to scoff when he recognized what it was. _This? This is a dead memory. You have experienced nothing like this in your life. It is worthless._

Ryou shook his head, or tried to. He thought he could feel his body attempt to respond and ignored it. _"No,"_ he replied. _"Not what's going on, the emotion."_

The other remained silent, leaving Ryou to just feel the skepticism.

If Ryou had felt like he was in a dream, he would have known how ridiculous the idea of taking the hand of someone who was bodiless and having them feel something that wasn't there really was. But it was a dream, as much a dream as he had ever had, which was probably the only reason it worked. He took the hand of the other and guided it to a specific place within the memory.

"_Here,"_ he said. _"This is where we are alike."_

It was true that the events of the memory were as far outside young Ryou's experience as it was possible to be. But what was important were the emotions underlying it.

Isolation. Resentment. Loneliness.

Whatever disparate causes they may have stemmed from, the responses that resulted were the same for both of them.

_This will do,_ the other said at last, satisfied.

Ryou smiled, pleased to have done well, and nearly missed when his internal world began reordering itself.

The other took the memory from Ryou, then he pulled a much softer looking memory, one of Ryou's, out of the nothingness around them. He knew that it must be the one that matched the other's precisely. One in each hand, he brought the two together, closer and closer until they began to overlap, one a hard, bright marble, the other a soft, iridescent bubble. They overlapped, merged, and finally fused together to make one.

That one merged memory set off a chain reaction through both minds. Other memories of theirs, memories that had been too different to blend before, came together. The barrier between their minds crumbled and disintegrated, and Ryou found himself in the center of a sudden, silent storm as everything reoriented itself. He watched it all, wondering just how stupid he had been to help this happen.

Most disorientating, though, he could _feel_ his mind rearranging itself, making room for another and stretching to hold more. His perceptions wavered and swam, blurred and doubled, then cleared, and slowly began to settle.

Finally – _finally!_ – Ryou felt himself slipping down into welcome unconsciousness. Far away, he thought he could hear the other speak, but using Ryou's voice.

"Goodnight, Ryou Bakura."

…

The night is a black cloak thrown over the world, muffling it in darkness. The cold wind that blows across the land holds the bitter bite of winter, but the scent it carries with it is not the scent of snow or ice, it is the scent of sand and rock. All around is a great, yawning sensation of complete openness, a landscape unbroken by forest or mountain. It is a vastness matched only by the skies overhead that stretch into infinity, dusted with fiery stars.

In the distance, the perfect blackness of the night is broken by flickering lights moving quickly. Their reflections reveal an unexpected rise in the landscape, cut into with small homes, their empty windows staring sightless eyes into the hills. On approaching closer, the poor conditions of the tiny village are obvious. There are no shutters and no doors to keep out the animals. What pottery that exists is plain, poorly made and in many cases cracked. The little cloth to be seen is threadbare, dull colored, none of it large enough to be used for even simple sunshades during the day, when here, on the very edge of the desert, awnings are a necessity.

A dog barks sharply as men turn a corner of a hut, the light of the torches they carry spills up the walls, transforming the dull adobe to rich pottery, the bronze of their arm bands, at their belts and their naked blades to glittering gold. There are nearly a dozen of them, and as they pass the door of the pottery hut, half stop at the door while the rest continue on. Those who stayed behind slip into the hut one by one.

From inside, there are screams. Moments pass like minutes, then the men in their armor reappear, now burdened with three struggling forms. All are long-haired, dirty, the few scraps of clothing covering their bodies are worn and tattered. Their feet are bare and their hands are empty, and behind the wild locks of hair, all black as the night around them, their eyes are wide and terrified. Two women and one man, all are borne away by the men with weapons, two of them for each of the poorly dressed villagers.

In every corner of the village set in the hills that image repeats itself. Numbers differ, sometimes more resistance is given the invaders, but the result is always the same: the ill-prepared villagers are overpowered and taken away, all in the same direction, leading away from the village and deeper into the hills. In most cases, it's better when no resistance is offered at all.

At the edge of the village, set further away from the hills and where the huts nearly stand on their own, the night is deeper. The invaders are not so thick here, their torches do not penetrate as far. Those that do come to this corner seem small, isolated, not so brash as their fellows.

A small group of three passes by an especially tiny hut, laughing amongst themselves. They are at ease, enjoying themselves and unconcerned. One pauses, hangs back as the others continue. He peers into a gap between the huts, and calls out to his comrades, who continue on without him. He's found someone hiding there, and starts squeezing himself into the narrow passage to get them out.

The shadows… _thicken_… so all light, even his torch is extinguished. There is silence, all sounds, even the screams in the distance receding to leave unnatural quiet. Then there is the softest of sounds, like a lonely sigh in an empty temple. The shadows pull away, letting flickering light and terrible shrieks seep back into the world.

The light of the torch once again illuminate the hut and the narrow gap, but the man who had held it is gone.

Consumed by the night.

A tiny form appears, coming slowly into the glow of the fallen torch. It is a child, no more than five, possibly younger, clothed in rags and wide eyes darting in fear. He is small, this child, and thin. While not starving, the angles of his bones are easily seen at his elbows, his knees and ankles. The expression of terror he wears is genuine, but while the shadows press close at every side, he steps around the abandoned torch, disdaining its light. He is the child of a poor village that rarely could afford to burn precious oil to chase away the dark; he's familiar with the night, does not fear Nuit's embrace. As he steps around the guttering flame, the light touches him, briefly reveals him. His hair is white as bleached bone, his eyes a startling violet in a face tanned by Ra's touch. Wet tracks sprang from the corners of those oddly colored orbs and etched pathways down his dusty cheeks.

The child has no need to fear the night, but the screams of his neighbors and family that grow steadily fainter, the soldiers with their flashing blades and cruel smiles, those ought to give him pause. And yet, rather than fleeing, he turns his feet toward the receding sounds. Rather than following the irrigation canals that fed the village's sparse fields of wheat and barley back to the Nile, and thence to some town to seek succor and safety, the child follows the pleas of his fellows, flitting amongst the deepest shadows.

The way is hard and long, the path taken by the soldiers and their struggling captives a winding one amid the high hills. At times the way narrows to a mere goat track between walls of stone, and this is when the child's fear soars to its height, for there is nowhere to hide, and the sounds of the struggling villagers – those who are still capable of any struggle – bounce up and down the narrow gorge like the distorted cries of hungry ghosts. Still, the boy continues on, even after the bare soles of his feet, toughened as they were from having never worn sandals to protect them, began to bleed, cut on sharp stones that litter the way.

Finally, as the child's steps are becoming as much stumble as travel and he believes he will never reach the end, never catch up with his family and friends that are being stolen away from him, the way opens suddenly to a basin in the hills. The child has never seen this place before, but does not stop to wonder at it. Ahead he can see the licking fire of torches and the long, dancing shadows of the soldiers their light casts. They are all approaching a shadow, which the child knows immediately is a structure by it precise lines and symmetrical design, sheltered like a precious egg in its nest of rock. The figures bearing torches, and in most cases complacent forms, entered the structure and quickly disappeared. They turned no corners and were not cut off by doors, it was as though the very ground rose up and swallowed them whole.

The child, exhausted beyond thought, his throat aching with thirst and his feet cut and bleeding into the gravel, follows those disappearing lights.

He is still careful, keeping to the deepest shadows and shunning any light that could reveal him, but there are no guards left to watch the door. With the entire population of the nearest village in their control, what would they be guarding against?

Nearly the entire population. The child slips in easily, a silver edged shadow himself in the moonlight.

In the dark and with eyes only for where he sets his feet, all the child sees is that the building is old. Very old, for the pillars standing beside the doors are worn smooth, devoid of any designs or writings, and the builders of something this precisely balanced would never leave it so plain. All fine decoration left out to the wind has long since eroded. It doesn't occur to the child _how_ old it must be, how little wind and abrasive sand it would be exposed to in the basin. Within there are stairs leading down. The child creeps down them stealthily, his ears filling with strange sounds, his nostrils with smells that are both familiar and foreign and make his stomach churn.

Deeper and deeper he goes, never coming within sight of a soldier. An oppressive, humid heat builds as the stairs lead him further below ground. It reminds the child of the times when his mother would make stew to eat, the steam that would wash over his face when he leaned over the pot to inhale the mouthwatering fumes. It's like that, but holds none of the comfort of his mother's cooking. It only fills him with vague, growing dread. What could they be doing, what did it all mean?

The child hears them before he reaches the bottom of the stairs. Voices. Not the voices of his fellow villagers, though they are still there to be heard, occasionally rising into sharp, brief shrieks of terror and agony. Nor the gruff, taunting voices of the soldiers, who seem to have lost their tongues between the village and this underground temple. No, these are low, droning voices, shaping words the child does not know, but which rattle and clang along his nerves. They are so quiet, yet he hears them perfectly, as though they were being whispered right by his ear. The boy shivers, and continues on.

At the bottom of the steps, there is a doorway. Light spills through like a great wave, splashing the wall across from it with glowing radiance. From this doorway also come the sounds that drew the child on, that still draw him on. With as much noise as a cat, the child approaches the doorway and peers around the threshold.

Up until now, the night had held a feeling of unreality, a dreamlike quality dipped in a nightmare that made him believe he would soon wake. Looking beyond the threshold of that accursed room, the last child of the lost village was pushed into the cruelest, most brutal of nightmares, while at the same time coming more awake than he remembered being in his brief life before. This was no dream, there would be no waking.

Larger than any chamber he has seen, the underground temple contains his entire village and their captors with room to spare. There are tall men, swathed from head to toe in fine robes and bedecked with gold and electrum at their throats, wrists and ankles that glint whenever they move. These men are the reciters of strange words, they seem to be leading whatever is happening, standing on raised daises and facing the rest. But what the child sees the most are the great gleaming vats, filled and heated to boiling by fires beneath them. It is the piled tangle of limp, dirty, painfully thin limbs that rest beside them. It is the troughs cut into the stone floor, filling with a darkly shining liquid coming from the piles of bodies, directing it… somewhere. The child's attention skitters around the great room like a beetle in a jar, registering details that don't seem to fit together. The rise and fall of something white and round in one of the vats. A pendent, remarkably still whole, hanging from a lifeless hand, deep in a pile of corpses. Blood spattered on the white kilts of the eerily silent soldiers. The faces of the villagers yet living, some frightened, some crying, and some so blank and empty they might already be dead. The face of one of the robed chanters, hooded and with a neat beard, his eyes so wretched even as his lips shaped the words, his buzzing going on and on...

The child stays, completely frozen, much longer than he ever intends. When the spell finally breaks, he runs, as quickly as ever he can, tearing up the stairs and out into the cool, dry night air. He no longer thinks of stealth, only of escape. Though his limbs shake and his body cries out for sleep and for water, the boy still runs, down the narrow goat trail, through his gutted village, the only home he'd ever known, and into the wilderness. He is not called, nor ever missed. His mind a terrified, confused blank, the boy follows directions that seem to spring up from the darkest corners of his mind, the shadows cloaking him.

One shadow, watching the boy and his reckless escape, pulls away. It wavers, uncertain of itself. A moment ago, there had been no 'self' to contemplate, and it is confused. Slowly, it begins to remember. It is no shadow, but a boy, a boy not of this place or of this time, but he cannot remember how he had gotten here…

Suddenly, he recalls a name, his name. Ryou Bakura.

As soon as he does, the desert, the empty village, the fleeing boy, all melts away and leaves him to dreams that are blissful in their emptiness.

…

_**A/N2:**__ Everyone make it through the weirdness? Awesome, on to the miscellaneous notes!_

_Hidden Temple:__ If I recall correctly, the temple in which the slab that holds the Millennium Items and in which the ritual to create them was held was shown to actually be __in__ Kul Elna somewhere. Somewhere in the back, yes, but still in the town. That's changed a little bit here, and it might be seen later on that I'll be changing the placements of a few other things in Ancient Egypt / Memory World. The reason for this is just to give everything a grander feel to it, and hopefully make it a little more realistic. I mean, in the anime it seems like you could get anywhere in Egypt in a matter of hours, and that's just not very accurate. So we'll just be assuming that the manga and anime were using a little something called 'plot convenience' by squishing everything close together. We're dumping that plot convenience in favor of others, using some poetic license and widening the playing field some in Egypt. Sandbox time!_

_Story Structure:__ What we see here with flashbacks into Ancient Egypt, those will be happening frequently, if not every chapter, (I haven't got the outline quite that detailed). So be prepared for plenty of time spent there! I'll be doing my best to keep everything historically accurate – within reason – but if I flub, please feel free to point it out to me along with some source materials so's I can educate myself for the future. _

_**And as always, my lovelies, thank you for reading! Until next time. :3**_


	4. Part III

_**A/N:**__ Oh boy, oh boy, backgrounds are background-y! 8D_

_**Warnings: **__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled, then read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Disclaimer: **__Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Part III

Raven Ehtar

…

Ryou woke, and was immediately confused. He could have sworn he had already been awake, how could he have woken up? A faint line appeared between his brows as he frowned, trying to remember the last few minutes. He didn't _think_ he'd been sleeping… He could remember lying on his back as dawn broke outside his window, and how he watched as the sunlight slowly spilled across his ceiling like warm honey, chasing away the shadows. He could remember how it had made him feel… full. At peace. And he had thought that this was the most beautiful thing he had seen in… in how long?

The line between Ryou's brows deepened. No matter how hard he tried to remember, the rest of that thought was gone. In a long time, he was sure, just not _how_ long. Which was such an absurd thought. There was nothing so special about light on his ceiling. He must have still been dreaming when that had crept into his mind.

And there had been… other dreams before that. Nightmares, he thought, but they were fuzzy, barely there anymore. Hiding, pain, darkness and fear, someone calling out his name… then the same person calling his name again, but it _wasn't_ his name. It was all very vague and confused now. As was the nature of dreams, it had all made sense while he was living through it, but now it was disjointed, the few impressions that survived the night not linking together cohesively. He wondered, given the little he could recall now, if he would even _want_ to remember all he had dreamed.

He shifted a little, and realized suddenly that he was lying on the floor. His futon, still neatly made, was a good two feet away to his right. Had he rolled out of bed during the night, trying to escape his nightmares? He also noticed that he was still dressed in the clothes he'd worn the day before. He stared down at himself, still wearing the same button down shirt, the same pants, the same socks, even his slippers. Now he was really confused; when exactly had he gone to sleep? Ryou tried to remember getting ready for bed, but it was all a muddle after his 'party'. He had put his gifts away, he remembered that. The mirror on his bedside table, the paints and brushes in a drawer and the box with the golden ring – which he had thrown against a wall in a fit of temper. Then he had sat down to work on the figurine Suichi and Taro had crushed, and had actually finished it, if he remembered right. And then… and then…

… he'd picked up the box – and opened it…?

A sharp rap at his door made Ryou jump, his heart leaping to his throat.

"Ryou!" came the familiar voice of his mother. "Are you awake? You had best hurry, or you'll be late for school! Breakfast is laid, Amane has already eaten and you have fifteen minutes to catch your bus!"

Ryou was on his feet in an instant, tearing about his room in a panicked frenzy. The panic of being late for class brought one memory crashing in bright and clear: He hadn't finished his homework the night before.

…

The school day was shaping up to be very strange. Ryou didn't know if it was just how he had woken up that was making it hard to find a good rhythm to settle into, but it felt as though every step he took, every move he made, was just slightly out of sync. Out of sync with _what_, he wasn't sure, but it felt like he had a physical echo to his body, running half a step behind his true self, making him stumble when he wasn't paying attention. Not having his math homework completed was another issue, but not so heavily punished as he had feared it would be. He hadn't been made to stand out in the hallway, but that was the promised consequence should he fail to bring it in again tomorrow.

No, he would be glad to get home again, and shake this strange feeling that had settled over his shoulders like a shroud. After his mother had roused him, he'd used every second in getting ready in the most haphazard fashion he could ever remember doing before. Every textbook he could find was snatched up and stuffed into his bag with no consideration as to their order and the bag zipped up and buckled before he realized he'd forgotten his notebooks. After they were added to the bursting satchel and it again all sealed up he remembered his pens, pencils and wallet to buy lunch. By then he was so flustered that he'd thrown the bag over his shoulder without bothering to close it properly. He only changed his pants to the regulation school pair and put on the jacket over his street shirt, judging the risk of anyone looking closely enough to notice was worth the time it saved to not change into a clean one. He'd not washed his face or brushed his teeth, having only enough time to run a comb through his hair a dozen times – and ripping out a few knots in the process – before speeding into the kitchen. His mother had reprimanded him, either for his sleeping in or for his mad dash through the apartment or both; he wasn't sure, as he ignored her. He'd caught up a glass of orange juice, chugged it down – to further reprimands – and then stuffed two pieces of dry toast between his teeth and sped to the door. The laces of his shoes became sentient, he was positive; deliberately twisting out of his grasp like vipers when he'd most needed them to cooperate. He'd torn out of the apartment, his shoes tied too loose, his shirt un-tucked, toast hanging out of his panting mouth and his heavy book bag hitting him across the legs with every step. Despite his rush, there was still a vague terror that he had still missed the bus. Upon seeing a few fellow students also standing by patiently, however, he sighed with relief. He finished his toast with as much dignity as he could muster, taking deep breaths between bites. His mind was still muddled, but it seemed the day would be a little better after making it to the bus on time.

That little illusion was shattered upon stepping onto the bus when it arrived, and his overloaded bag tipped, scattering its contents over the steps and across the sidewalk.

Not a good beginning to the day, overall.

The ride to the school, the daily ritual of swapping out his shoes, finding his place in the classroom and setting out his supplies, all did nothing to settle him back into his groove. The inside of his mouth tasted foul because he hadn't brushed his teeth, the dry toast and orange juice had done nothing to fix that, and his whole body was incredibly sore. At first he thought it a combination of having apparently spent the night on the hard floor and then spending the first part of his morning at a dead run, except that _everything_ hurt; from his back and his legs to his arms, his face and even his toes. It certainly made trying to function normally difficult, doubly so with the odd echoing sensation of his movements and his stubbornly wandering thoughts.

Whatever was left of his dreams blew away with the trials of the day.

While the troubles of school life that plagued him so long, those did not wait long to impress themselves on Ryou again.

The feeling of palms slamming into his shoulder blades was becoming so familiar that Ryou had to wonder if permanent impressions weren't being left behind. Years from now, long after he'd graduated and escaped the reach of all his bullies, there would still be hand prints left in his scapula, mementoes of his schooldays.

Ryou stumbled, but didn't fall. Instead he staggered into a wall, narrowly avoiding cracking his nose into the bricks. Before he could flip around himself – his reflexes were dull, another result of his 'body echo' – one of those hands took him by the shoulder and did it for him. Ryou wasn't surprised to see it was Taro. The older boy leered into his face, his teeth and eyes looking far too small in the frame they fitted into. Privately Ryou thought he looked more and more like a goblin every day.

"Hello there, birthday boy," he said through the grin full of too-small teeth. "You have anything special today after your day of gifts? Anything you want to share?"

Ryou stared back up at him, feeling strangely detached even from this, like he was watching a scene unfold on television or in a game. He knew he should be frightened. Taro had caught him inside, it was true, but he was cornered by the bathrooms, down a side hall no one came down unless they needed the facilities, and right now every class was in progress. The chances of rescue were slim at best. Still, all he did was look up at Taro, his heart barely changing its steady rhythm, only the tiniest jolts of adrenaline shooting through his bloodstream. He blinked, and then replied with a calm that would later baffle him. "No."

Taro scoffed in his face. "Don't give me that, Miss Priss. Everyone knows your family is one of the richest in the school, and rich kids always get great loot on birthdays. And it would be rude not to share."

The younger boy struggled a little to control his face. Rich? That was stretching the word a little. And as for expensive gifts, well, one certainly counted, but a paint set and mirror with a kindergartener's frame didn't. None of them would be things he would bring to school with him. Did Taro expect him to have just gotten more rare figures to fall prey to the underside of his shoe? Or was he expecting Ryou to have brought in _any_ of his gifts, no matter what they were, for his bully to steal or destroy?

"I don't have anything to share," Ryou said, still calm. Though a more accurate description might have been 'numb'. "I only received a few presents, and I left them all at home."

Taro's face, never a lovely sight, darkened in an ugly way. "How very inconsiderate." His body, already blocking Ryou into the corner – close, but not close enough to the door to escape – leaned a little closer, crowding him uncomfortably. "What am I supposed to do for entertainment, now?"

It all felt like a film playing out, with Ryou's consciousness safely tucked away someplace far removed, simply observing. But it was a film with a familiar theme, one whose pattern he could trace without having to watch. Here, with the heightened threat of violence was where he was meant to back down, to murmur something indistinguishable but generally placating, and sneak off with nothing but more taunts at his back. It's how the drama of '_Ryou, a School Boy's Life'_ was meant to go. There was never a variation of the theme that had him come away with more than a few shreds of dignity.

But if today Ryou was the audience watching the show unfold, then whoever was in charge of his body hadn't read the script.

Ryou shifted, a small movement meant to press himself further into the corner, his lips forming around words to fashion a meaningless apology, when the flow of the scene abruptly changed. Suddenly Ryou felt too hot, a flush speeding up from his collar and across his face. White noise filled his ears, like TV static, and his vision tunneled, cutting off his periphery. Instead of stepping back, Ryou was taking one _forward_, forcing himself into Taro's personal space until he stepped back, giving the much smaller boy ground! Though the small retreat might also have been from the glare that was leveled at him, a glare given from beneath drawn brows and swaying bangs, from a boy who had no right showing resistance. Before he could gather his wits, Ryou ground out in a voice he barely recognized as his own, "I suggest playing with rocks. Even chances you can outsmart _them_."

For a moment time seemed to freeze. Ryou would have laughed at the expression of confusion on Taro's fat face, except he was almost certain he was wearing the exact same one, overlaid with a shade of horror. _What had he just said?_

Eventually realization and fury twisted Taro's face. At that slow dawning, Ryou's detached consciousness seemed to decide that enough was enough and came back full force, dumping him back in his body just when he could most use being away. Terror and dread promptly washed over him, dampening the heated flush on his skin and leaving behind a sick clamminess.

Taro drew back a fist with one hand while the other came up to shove him in the chest, either to knock him off balance or to hold him down so he couldn't get away.

As soon as Taro's meaty palm came into contact with his shirtfront, Ryou let out an involuntary shriek, pain ripping though his chest.

With a look of panic, Taro changed the fist coming at him to a palm, pressing it against his mouth to stifle any more sounds. While that worked to muffle Ryou's whimpers, it couldn't call back the scream that had already escaped.

"Is everything alright down here?"

At the call of a teacher's voice, Taro's panicked expression became almost comical, though even without Taro's fingers digging into his cheek Ryou wouldn't have been able to laugh. He was too distracted, trying to drag air into his lungs without letting his ribcage to move in the process. It felt as though a giant set of claws had taken hold of his ribs and was squeezing with every attempt at breathing he made. Outside his own struggle for oxygen Ryou could just hear the sound of footsteps approaching. Bringing his face closer than Ryou had ever wanted to be to him, Taro hissed, "Keep quiet, Priss," and stepped back abruptly, pulling his hands back behind himself, a picture of comparative innocence.

As the teacher came round the corner of the alcove harboring the two boys, Ryou was still attempting to catch his breath, one hand over his sternum to keep his heart from bursting out of his chest like some sort of science fiction alien. Beneath his fingers, under his shirt, something hard moved with a muted _clink_.

The teacher, a woman Ryou didn't recognize, took in the scene of them standing in the lonely corner, a little frown line appearing between her shaped brows. "What's going on here, boys?" Her tone suggested she wasn't expecting to like the answer.

"Nothing, _sensei_," Taro burbled. "Just met in the hall and were saying 'hi' before heading back to class."

Ryou took a slow, deep breath which set off a small coughing fit. The teacher looked at him, her frown deepening with concern. She held out a hand towards him, stepping closer. "Goodness, are you feeling alright? Do you need to see the nurse?"

Ryou shook his head, white strands of hair whipping him in the face with each frantic toss. "No, thank you, _sensei_," he managed through the coughs. He snuck a look up at Taro, who was glowering at him behind the adult's back. He decided he didn't want to be sent back to class at the same time as Taro, not when it involved long empty hallways. He flashed what he hoped was a reassuring smile the teacher's way, mumbled, "Excuse me," and shouldered his way through the restroom door. As it swung shut relief flooded through him, not the least of reasons being the _sensei_ telling Taro to get back to class. At least he wouldn't have to worry about being jumped as soon as he walked out the door.

Finally feeling more in his own body than he had all day, the boy walked to the sinks, twisted the taps on and splashed icy water over his face.

_What the hell had come over him?_ He'd stood up to Taro, who had him boxed into a corner, with no real chance of rescue in sight at the time. More than that, he'd not even really felt nervous at the time. Instead he'd felt a rush of anger, close to fury, and a need to punish, to pay back the one who had been the source of suffering. There had been no fear until he'd already stuck his foot in it and it was too late to back out. That was when the much more familiar sensation of dread came sweeping back to fill him up.

_What is wrong with me today?_

Ryou leaned over the sink, watching the water swirl round and round the drain in a whirlpool before snaking down the pipes. He concentrated on breathing, and over the sound of rushing water he heard the faint _clink_ from beneath his shirt again.

Frowning, Ryou undid the buttons of jacket and rumpled shirt. Beneath his clothes lay the pendant his father had sent to him, its golden, unblinking eye seeming to glare back at Ryou with metallic malevolence. It hung from a cord that looped round his neck, the metal heavy and greasy feeling against his skin.

Ryou stared at it, water dripping from his face and a few small locks of hair. He couldn't remember putting the cord on the pendant, nor the pendant on himself. It wasn't just today that was so off; last night had been as well, complete with memory lapses. The boy squinted in the mirror, looked down, then back up to the mirror. Carefully he pushed aside the hanging points of the ring, shuddering involuntarily as the oily feeling metal touched his fingers, and stared at the pale skin just beneath them.

A set of very, very dark bruises stood out against the pale flesh that covered his ribs. They were so dark that for a moment Ryou thought they were open wounds. A careful prod corrected that assumption, and informed him that they were unbelievably tender and painful. These were the reason it suddenly became hard to breathe when Taro had pushed him. He'd slammed the ring right into the bruises, making them flare to life. But how had he gotten them? Slept on his belly at some point during the night, pinning the metal between him and floor? It was the only thing he could think of. But then, he wasn't exactly at 100%, just now.

Really, when had he put the pointed ring on, and why hadn't he taken it off before falling asleep? Why had he gone to sleep in his clothes, feet away from his futon? Why did he feel so… so out of step with the world around him, not like himself at all?

The eye of the ring drew his gaze to it, just as the drain water had been drawn irresistibly to the drain. He stared at it until his eyes started to ache. Under the fluorescent lights that drained the life and color out of everything, the eye seemed oddly alive. A bead of water ran from his face, down his chest and to the metal, glinting over the smooth curve. Watching it, Ryou's mind wandered…

… _a darkness that was large only because that was all there was. All encompassing, all consuming, until the very thought of light becomes something to be treasured. Until sunbeams on a paneled ceiling become something beautiful and precious…_

The bell rang, making Ryou jump, abruptly coming back to reality. It was the end of a period, and he had to get back before someone started looking for him. Without even thinking to take the ring off first, he buttoned up his uniform and headed back to his home room.

…

The rest of the day was an improvement over how it had begun. He still hurt everywhere, most especially over his chest since his attention had been brought to it. Every movement made him ache and the ring under his shirt brush against the bruises, lighting them up with pain. He wondered how he had managed to _not_ notice them before. Still, it was some improvement. He finally felt awake, and in his own body. The strange physical echo that had been clinging to him evaporated and he could function without the danger of running into a wall while trying to avoid stumbling over himself.

Though, that didn't necessarily mean he was able to focus, either. His mind continually wandered when he should have been paying attention to lessons. He thought about his father, half a world away in the place he considered to be more home to him than with his family. He thought about the last time he had seen him, a brief visit of a month over summer, time he could spare from his work, but no more. He'd been distracted the whole time he had been with them, spending his evenings reading academic papers and all his conversation centered on dusty old tombs. It had felt bizarre, like having a houseguest no one knew exactly how to behave around. Even his mother seemed to feel it, which made every meal tense and awkward.

Ryou wondered, as their homeroom teacher wrote up a simple equation on the board, what exactly had possessed his father to send him such a strange birthday gift? His note had said it had seemed 'meant for him', but what did that mean? He'd never shown much interest in Egypt or anything related to it. If anything, he did his best to avoid the subject entirely, as getting bored to death by his father whenever he was around was quite enough. It was probably just a case of his father not knowing at all what to get his son and hoping that what would have interested him as a child held true for his offspring as well. Even so, it didn't answer all Ryou's questions. Where had his father found the ring, what was its original purpose, was it even genuine or was it some tourist trinket? It certainly felt like more than a knick-knack when he held it in his hands, but he had trouble imagining a genuine artifact making it through customs. How could a precious Egyptian artifact come to be hanging around the neck of a ten year old Japanese boy?

Which got him to wondering how, exactly, it had wound up around his neck at all? Try as he might, Ryou could not call up any memories beyond the 'party' and the opening of his gifts, eating cake, spending the day with his mother and Amane, heading back to his room for the night… putting things away, finishing rebuilding the broken figurine… No, after that memories fled before his searching, refusing to reveal themselves. The image of picking up the box that contained the ring might have been a memory, or it might have just been his imaginings of how he must have handled it. He could have put it down to over tiredness making his recollections so muddled, but that didn't hold up. He hadn't been _so_ tired yesterday as to lose chunks of his day, even ones near the end of it.

Then there was the matter of his dreams. He remembered practically nothing at all, yet as the day wore on they weighed on his mind, as though they had something important to convey, some clue to impart that would unravel of the uncertainties of the morning.

He caught himself idly playing with the ring through his shirt. Frustrated, he forced himself to pay attention to the class, which had become history without his noticing.

By the end of the day he had exhausted himself with his brooding. After so many hours he would have thought he would have had enough, but as he gathered his things and went out to meet the bus that would take him home, his sneakers and the pavement between blurred as his eyes unfocused. He was miles away as his body continued to carry out its functions, a mindless automaton. So it came as a jolt when his elbow was caught in a vise-like grip and he was steered off of his course.

Ryou came to his senses just in time to have them nearly knocked out again as he was thrown against the brick wall of the school building. Ryou looked around quickly, noting that while he and his assailant – Taro, of course – were only a stone's throw away from the throngs of children awaiting buses; they were around a corner, effectively hidden. Help was unlikely unless he screamed for it, then.

And Taro wasn't interested in any sort of long, drawn out kind of payback for being embarrassed earlier. No sooner had Ryou caught his breath and realized where he was then pain and light bloomed like a sun in his left eye. It wasn't the first time he'd been punched, but it was a particularly heavy blow. Recoiling, he already knew it was going to leave an impressive black eye.

Then… then came something even less expected than the punch that left one entire side of his face throbbing. It was a repeat of what had happened before when Taro had him cornered: He was suddenly too hot, the sound of TV static filled his ears, his vision narrowed to only hold Taro and every aching muscle in his body tensed. But it was faster this time. Much, much faster, almost instantaneous. One moment he was reeling from the strike, the next he was coming back up, his teeth bared in a snarl, the edges of his vision taking on a reddish hue…

Rage. That's what twisted and writhed in his guts, what filled his mind with terrible, wordless violence. He had always felt it, especially against his tormentors, but had kept it under tight control, hidden away where no one could see. Now it was loose, and Ryou didn't even attempt to stop the fist that seemed to move of its own accord, and which landed under Taro's chin, snapping his head back. He watched, once again a distant observer from his own body, in fascinated horror as he took hold of the larger boy's shirtfront and shoved him back, away, into the opposite wall of the narrow walkway and held him there. He watched himself as he leaned his face in close to Taro's, his lips curling back from his teeth in an animalistic sneer, rough sounds that might have been meant to be words but came out as an incoherent snarl. He watched Taro's eyes widen as he pulled back a balled fist, ready to trade one blow for another…

Ryou blinked. He was back, fully in control of his body, and wondering why it was he thought he could punch his bully in the face and get away with it.

Taro felt the difference immediately, his beady black eyes narrowing. Ryou took the moment of confusion to turn and hightail it to his bus, which was just finishing loading up its students.

…

Not for the first time, and Ryou suspected it was far from the last, he was grateful of his mother's apparent indifference to him and his comings and goings. His face was already swelling, and from the furtive glances he'd received on the bus ride home, it was shaping up to be one doozy of a shiner. Even the bus driver, an arthritic old man who wore a baseball cap and never seemed to take much notice of the children he ferried from place to place, had done a double take when he caught sight of Ryou's face. He'd quickened his pace and gotten off and away before the driver had managed to find his voice, avoiding one confrontation. And he avoided a second by simply calling to his mother that he was home and scurrying into his room before she thought to check on him. He needn't have worried. From the sound of it, she was fully preoccupied with helping Amane help _her_ make dinner. He made it to the questionable sanctuary of his bedroom without incident, only coming out once for a cold, damp washcloth for his eye.

He was trying very, very hard to not think about what had happened. It was too frightening to think about rationally, which was what he needed to do. He needed to take it all apart, decide what it meant, and then figure out what to do next. Except whenever his thoughts would drift back over the events of the day, they would skitter apart, making it all seem even less real than while he had been living it through. It wasn't that he had been attacked and was now a hiding in his room, clutching a wet rag to his face that throbbed in time with his heartbeat, a headache forming between his brows. The incident where his figurine had been crushed had been a surprisingly mild case of bullying, and while this incidence was particularly harsh, it was far from Ryou's first time on the wrong side of someone's knuckles.

No, what was hard to come to terms with was his own behavior, how his body had seemed to act without any sort of input from his brain. He was a thoughtful person, especially for his age. The idea that without any kind of warning his judgment could be bypassed and he could do things he would never otherwise consider… it was terrifying. What if it happened again? What if, while going through his day, he just lost control? What was he capable of doing, of _saying_ if he lost control again?

Even more unsettling, perhaps, was how it had _felt_. There had been fear, certainly, with its lesser followers, anxiety and anticipation, and then that terrible, red raw rage that had bubbled up from the pit of his stomach like acid, burning through his whole body until the very tips of his fingers had tingled. Fear and rage, those had been the two overwhelming emotions he'd felt, but as he thought back to it – try as he might _not_ to – there had been more mixed in. Surprise had probably been foremost, closely tied with shock, not only at his own actions, but that he had gotten Taro to react, to back off, even. It was probably only out of his own disbelief that he had backed down, but still, it was there. Then, beneath everything else he had been feeling, there had been this sort of… happiness. Not like his usual sort of happiness, the kind he felt when he beat a videogame or went to his favorite fast food place, but a different sort. A darker sort. Ryou wasn't even sure he should label it with so bright a word as 'happy', which brought to mind smiles and laughter and a sense of comfort. What he had felt… it might be closer to 'glee'. A dark, half-mad glee to see the fear flash in Taro's eyes, to have him so easily, if briefly, in his power, at his mercy. It was a wild, fluttering satisfaction in his heart that warmed him in a way the rage had not, and for the barest of instants, he had imagined what it would be like to have Taro even more at his mercy, to have him plead for it, and his heart had swelled to bursting…

Ryou shook his head, pressed the now warm washcloth more firmly against his swelling eye. He didn't want to think about it, about the sensations that had crept through him, so foreign and yet so familiar at the same time. Finding enjoyment in another's discomfort, no matter how deserved it might be, was repugnant to him, utterly repugnant. He just had to remember _that_ and forget the forbidden rush of joy.

He worked on his homework for the rest of the evening, focusing first on the math papers he had previously neglected – he had no desire to stand out in the hall! – then moving on to what had been assigned that day. When his mother called him for dinner he made the excuse of having too much work, and promised to come out later for food. It might have been a sign of trust that she didn't insist he come out, but Ryou chose to see it as further negligence. When Amane knocked on his door, again he said he was too busy, too tired to play, and promised to play tomorrow. She put up a little more of a fight, but she, too, eventually wandered off.

It was barely seven o'clock by the time Ryou had all of his assignments finished. He'd been checking the progress of his eye in Amane's mirror throughout the evening. It was swelling up, but the skin was still intact and the discoloration was surprisingly mild, not nearly as horrific as he had feared. Still, it was noticeable; even to his mother should she chance to look at him. It was best to stay in his room for the rest of the night to avoid a confrontation. He'd come home from school with bruises before and knew firsthand what it was like when a parent discovered them. He felt no need to repeat the experience. Still, he thought with a wince as his belly grumbled, he might sneak out for a snack once everyone else had gone to sleep.

In the meantime, he was stuck in his room with no more schoolwork to occupy his mind, to distract him from all the upsetting memories of the day.

With no assigned work to lose himself in, Ryou turned to his RPG's once again. He had no figures he wanted to work on, but he _had_ been taking notes for a storyline for some future campaign. Settling down at his desk, Ryou pulled out the notebook where he kept all of his gaming notes; his characters, stats, world maps, designer class attributes, monster and treasure distribution charts, dungeon layouts and plot outlines, and a pen. He opened it up to where he had left off, which wasn't very far in, and stroked his fingers over the paper lovingly. Even if he never got a chance to play with another human being in his entire life, he wouldn't be able to say it was wasted effort. Ryou loved figuring out all the details that went into a well-designed world, the little touches that made it feel really real. But more than anything, Ryou loved to tell a good story. As a Dungeon Master of RPGs, that was what his real job was: spinning an epic tale for others to enjoy and adventure through.

Ryou picked up his pen, found the balance of it, and continued to outline a pivotal character in his most recent game design.

_Our warrior is bereft of friends, expelled from his village and forbidden to return. He wanders the wilderness, aimless, for months before being discovered by a motley band of fortune-seekers. Taking pity on him and advantage of another experienced sword in their group, they allow him to join them. Unfortunately for them, they have heard no rumors of why the man was cast out by his own people, and the nature of his curse prevents him from speaking openly on the subject…_

Ryou was effectively lost in a cloud of imagination until his eyelids became too heavy to keep open any longer. Satisfied with the progress he'd made both on his schoolwork and on his hobby, he slipped into his pajamas and then into bed, ready for sleep.

Once safely between the sheets, however, sleep became a teasing specter. With nothing to preoccupy his thoughts, he couldn't keep from thinking of his day. He wouldn't be able to keep his black eye a secret for long, he knew. Most likely that would be discovered in the morning over breakfast, or if he somehow avoided that, there would be no way of hiding it at school. And once at school… Ryou groaned and turned towards the wall on his futon. Once he was at school he would have concerned teachers to contend with, the kind who would phone home to ask what was going on and set his mother into the kind of state he could never seem to set her into himself. He'd have fellow students staring, whispering about him behind their hands, asking what had happened just so they could tease him about it later. And their teasing would be nothing compared to what would happen when Taro, Suichi, or any of his other bullies caught him alone. He suffered under no delusion that Taro would tolerate the kind of insubordination he'd seen festering in Ryou's eyes, the blow he'd been dealt, nor would any of the others, whom Taro would doubtless tell. He could expect some form of retaliation. Though probably not more bruises, if the adults were on higher alert than usual. But then that would just mean subtler torments. Until Ryou was no longer being watched so closely…

And to top it all off, he was only now remembering the promise he'd made to his mother to find some food before going to sleep. The emptiness in his belly was just another thing working to keep him awake, but he didn't want to risk waking his mother in a food raid on the kitchen. Since obviously she had forgotten his promise as well, he had no intention of reminding her. So he curled into a little ball on his side, doing his best to ignore the throbbing of his face, the ache of his belly, the dread of the upcoming day and the still lingering fear of whatever it was that had come over him at school.

When an hour passed and still sleep eluded him, Ryou felt about ready to cry. He was so very tired but couldn't drift away, but more than that, he was bones deep weary of this kind of situation he always seemed to wind up in: backed into a corner, a bad option facing him on every side, and no one he could turn to, none he could rely on.

Why was it he could never seem to hold on to any friends? He wasn't so bad, just quiet and a little nerdy. That wasn't a good enough reason for a lifetime of exile, was it? Was it too much to ask that had have just one friend, just one other person he was allowed to feel close to, out of an entire world that, when it wasn't actively beating him down with cruelty, told him over and over he just wasn't that important enough to bother with?

Ryou allowed himself to sink into fantasy, imagining what it would be like to have that one friend whom he could always rely on. While in the thick of enemies, one friend counted for a lot.

As his mind finally began to unwind, the dream expanded so his one friend became many, and the bullies that had populated his entire world all disappeared. Ryou smiled sleepily at the impossible dream.

_It would be nice if that could happen,_ Ryou thought to himself muzzily, half asleep. _It would be so nice if life were like in an RPG, and the bad guys were all laid low, defeated, and the hero's companions remained by his side forever…_

As Ryou finally succumbed to exhaustion, that final, impossible wish echoing in his mind, the last thing Ryou remembered was an inexplicable feeling of someone smiling at him – just a tiny smirk – and a voice in his ear that might have said, "As _yadonushi_ wishes…"

And then there was darkness.

…

_**A/N2:**__ Fairly quiet chapter, all around… that'll probably change as we go along. ;3_

_Sensei:__ Probably __**everyone**__ knows this one, but just in case, this is the Japanese word for 'teacher'. Occasionally the term 'sempai' is used, but that's usually reserved for students who happen to teach as well, such as upperclassmen or TA's. __**Sometimes**__ teachers will allow students to address them as 'sempai', but it's a very informal term to use on a teacher. (This is all gleaned from internet research. If someone out there with more direct knowledge on this spots something wrong with any of this, feel free to point it out!)_

_Yadonushi:__ Again, something that just about every Bakura fan probably knows, 'yadonushi' can mean two things: Landlord / innkeeper, and host, such as a host for a parasite. Considering the nature of the spirit of the ring, it's a particularly well fitted term, one that was used in the original manga to my knowledge, and one that's become pretty common to see in fan works. Like this one. _

_RPGs VS JRPGs:__ Gaming nerds will know that there are some pretty big differences between a western RPG – Role Playing Game – and a JRPG, a Japanese Role Playing Game. There are entire videos and such dedicated to breaking down how they're different, in style, structure, goals and more, so I won't be getting into that. What's being shown here, though, is pretty typical of what you would find in old school western RPGs, like __Palladium__ or __Dungeons and Dragons__. The reason for this… I'm more familiar with the western style, and can do more with them without the danger of totally screwing it up. Author's convenience, and let's just say that Ryou is an enthusiast for foreign styles of gameplay. It can happen. _

_Japanese School Structure:__ Save for what I can find on Japanese school systems via the internet, I'm not that knowledgeable about how it all works. Rules on restroom breaks, for example, or how the children are supervised during recess breaks, I have no idea beyond what I've picked up from media. So again, I'm falling back on what's fairly typical of what you would find in the US. If any of this is so far off that someone notices, please point it out, send me some sources to educate me! :3_

_**Thank you, everyone, for reading! I appreciate all the time, love and attention! (Ooh, the attention, gimme gimme gimme! ;D)**_


	5. Part IV

_**A/N:**__ Y'all ready for a time warp? Good, cuz here's one, now!_

_**Warnings: **__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled, then read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Disclaimer: **__Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Part IV

Raven Ehtar

…

The moment the child wakes, it's to a dizzying, painful hunger twisting his insides. He knows before his eyes open that if he does not eat this day, he will not eat any of the days after.

The hunger, ever present and gnawing at his spine, is a good counterpart to the discomfort of heat, and it is very hot already. He has slept too long, and missed the coolest part of the day, when it would have been the best time to hunt along the river for tubers, late season eggs or fish. Lifting the threadbare cloth he uses as a blanket against the nighttime chill, the child peeks out, an undernourished face framing eyes the color of dusk, topped with hair white as bone. Blinking, he checks the sun's position and frowns. How could he have slept so late? It is already the third hour of morning, soon the heat of Ra will be soaring to its height, testing the endurance of even the healthiest of villagers, much less a starved orphan scavenging for scraps.

The boy rolls out of his hiding hole, a small figure of dirty skin and loose bones, held together with little more than grim determination. It is not much of a home he has made for himself, but better than living out in the desert or on the Nile's bare banks, where he would be easy prey for animals and elements alike. Possibly half a mile beyond the edge of the nearest town, the boy had chosen to take residence in a tiny abandoned farm house. Possibly its owners had experienced too little gain and too much loss to support themselves and were forced to abandon it, but it hardly mattered 'why'. It was empty and none of the town seemed inclined to reclaim it. With no one to shoo him away, the boy had taken it as his, chasing out the lizards, birds and insects that had taken up the corners, and set up as good a door as his slight body and small strength would allow. What remained in the empty farmhouse was only what was to be expected; ragged cast off kilts and blankets, broken crockery and a stick or two of furniture. He salvaged what he could and he survives.

The boy moves inside, having spent the night on the roof to enjoy the coolness. It is well into _shomu_, the harvest season, when the days are at their longest and most punishing. To sleep indoors, even in the comparatively cool night, would be unbearably stuffy. The roof offers reprieve from the heat and protection from all but the most determined of prowling predators.

The boy stumbles, falls to one knee before he can catch himself, scraping it open on the rough floor. He hisses at the pain, but it is only one more ache among many. The true cause of concern is _why_ he stumbled. He is weak, and growing even weaker. He's unnaturally thin and small for his age, he knows that, but over the last hand of days, it has become increasingly difficult to rise from his mat of gathered reeds. He knows the source, knows it is all to blame on his hunger, a sensation that is as familiar to him now as the sun beating his bare shoulders or the wind pressing his skin. Familiar, yes, but not comforting. It has been too long since he has had any more to eat than a raw, dug up nut-grass tuber or handful of seeds. His body requires more today, or he may well be too weak to try again on the morrow. His lateness in waking was clear enough sign of that.

It is _shomu_, but the harvests have been bad this year. Hapi, God of the great river Nile, had been too generous to his people, the flood waters had risen well beyond what had been expected, damaging homes, turning roads to heavy mud. When the waters drew back, they had not drawn back far enough, and crops grew poorly in fields that were too wet as well as too dry. It was not so bad as drought, there was an abundance of water and those foods to be scavenged from the wild still available, but the harvests of grain, vegetables and fruit all suffered. The season of plenty is not so plentiful as it might be, and as stores begin to dwindle, it is set to only get worse.

It's not yet so bad that starvation is a real danger to anyone other than such homeless urchins as himself. It may not be so prosperous as most years, but to those with money or land of their own it isn't even time to start tightening kilts. But the well-off knew as well as the poor that harder times are coming, and food or coin was less likely to fall from careless fingers. Most of what the boy has to eat comes from his own labors or from a few lucky chances at thieving.

His own labors… the boy lifts himself from the ground, limps his way to a shaded corner of the little house, holding the wall with one hand to steady himself. There is an urn there, the largest one he could find intact, covered with a piece of wood which is weighted with a stone to keep the vermin out. Removing the stone and cover, he dips in a cup on a long handle and lifts out a little water. It's cool, but tastes stale and a bit like mud and fish. He gathers the water himself from the river, bucket by bucket to bring back to his hovel, and has yet to master the technique of lifting out the water and leaving the riverbed behind. He drinks it anyway, grimacing only a little at the taste.

It's better than nothing, and might fool his clenching stomach into thinking it is full, at least for a little while.

His own labors, where food is concerned, has been haphazard but constant. He has tried, both this year and the one before, to grow some of his own food, but the few seeds he'd been able to gather and not immediately consume did not thrive. The few that sprouted were weedy things, sickly in the poor soil and scant water. The farm was too far away from the river to enjoy the renewal of silt during the inundation even in a heavy year, and there were no irrigation ditches to water his tiny plot. He'd tried bringing water to it just as he did for his urn, but it took too much time, time needed in gathering food he could eat _now._ The results of his effort was… negligible. He abandoned the garden, hearing what would survive to itself and concentrating on more productive means of gathering food. So far, only onions were growing with any success.

His other efforts varied in success, though all were more successful than his gardening. He'd tried fashioning a sling for bringing down fowl or small animals, remembering a neighbor child of his village having done the same and being occasionally rewarded with fresh meat for his efforts. But there is a knack to it he can't quite seem to get. He still tries from time to time, but it will be some time before he has a dinner brought in from a launched stone. He's had more luck in fishing the river for catfish and perch, gathering tender shoots which he could eat as he found them or gathering papyrus and reeds to roast over a fire. Sometimes he got lucky and happened on a nest with eggs or – even better – young fowl too young to fly away. Late in the season he can gather budding seeds, and there is always the option of digging up edible roots. The river provides for those willing to look, to those willing to risk the inherent dangers of hungry crocodile or temperamental water horse.

Today, he feels he has no time to spend in hunting what he could from the river. He's already picked what is nearby clean, he would have to travel far to find an area he has not already scoured bare, and even then, there's no guarantee he would find anything once he got there. He is not the only hungry mouth that plies the banks of the Nile.

Today, he is going to try stealing his meal.

The boy dislikes thieving, tries to avoid it whenever he can. Not out of any kind of moral imperative, but because he isn't very good at it. He's clumsy, tends to draw attention to himself at inopportune times and is slow on the getaway. It's only because of his size that he's managed to stay free as long as he has, ducking into small places his pursuers can't follow.

Attempting to steal means going into the village, being caught amongst buildings, surrounded by people he didn't know on all sides. The boy shudders a little at the thought. He hates the notion of such proximity almost as much as the thought of thieving. Being in a village, walking its roads or alleyways, hearing the voices of people raised in conversation or hawking their wares brought back unpleasant memories. Memories he'd just as soon forget completely.

Yet he can't. He tries to, desperately thinks of anything else but that night, that last night in Kul Elna, but he can't. He relives it in dreams, is sometimes reminded of it during the day by the smallest of things – a broken jar, the falling of a particular shadow – and suddenly he's back there again and –

- there's blood running across the floor in rivulets and he looks to see from where it comes –

- firelight races along the walls, thumps of sandaled feet coming –

- screams of neighbors, of friends as they fight for their lives –

- the gleam of a smooth, curving blade –

- his mother, pushing him, telling him to hide –

- boiling cauldrons, chanting men –

- running, running, running until his lungs felt ready to burst –

- screams and blood and terror and dark –

The boy gasps, clutching the rim of the water urn, his heart pounding, tears stinging his eyes and a cold sweat breaking out over his skin, leaving him to shiver. This is why he can't forget. Whenever he tries to distance himself, the memories rush into him, real and vivid in his mind, reopening the wound, leaving him raw and throbbing. He can't forget, nor does he think he ever will. It's like his own mind won't let him, giving him constant reminders and keeping his pain alive.

Pain he can live with. Hunger is a more demanding master. Gathering what reserve of strength he has, the boy dresses in his least threadbare kilt, wraps his head and tucks away as much of his distinctive hair as he can, and begins the long walk to the town.

…

The boy enters the village hesitantly, and is surprised to find how few people there are to be seen. It is late in the morning, but it is still morning. There should be many, going about their routines, getting as much done as possible before the heat would force them to retire for the mid-afternoon slumber. But no, the roads are curiously empty, save an occasional dog.

The boy in instantly wary, staying close to the sides of buildings, his eyes darting from place to place, his eyes open for the slightest sound. It may be nothing, but the boy has survived too much to just assume so. The empty streets bring certain memories far too close for comfort.

He does not have long to wait before his wonderings are answered, by great ringing bells and a distant cheer. That is when the boy remembers: today is the Festival of the Beautiful Reunion. Today, with much pomp and circumstance and under the watchful eyes of the many priests, Het-Hert would be taken from Her temple and ferried up the Nile in Her barque, surrounded by a flotilla of boats, all filled to the brim with worshippers. She would be taken upriver, making frequent stops along the way at other villages, until she arrived in Behdet. There, there would be more festivities, ceremonies and feasting, as everyone was allowed to celebrate the marriage twixt Het-Hert and Heru.

It is one of the favorite festivals of the people, as it is one all are welcome to participate in. Even now, the streets and homes are empty because all are gathered at the temples, to witness the Goddess begin her journey.

With a jolt, the boy realizes that if today is the Festival of Beautiful Reunion, then it is also his birthday. With a slightly guilty pang, the boy has to pause to recall and count up the number of years he has lived. Without a true home or family anymore, and every day a continuing struggle to keep enough food in his belly to keep it from pressing against his backbone, there has been little cause to keep track of the passing days, save to know when the next swelling of the river was due, and with it the growing season.

He is eight this day. Little more than three years, three rises and falls of the great river, have passed since his home was destroyed, his people butchered.

In the stillness and the heat, the boy shivers, then tenses, but the memories he half expects to engulf him keep their distance. Now is not a time to ponder the past, but to secure food, and quickly. The memories would keep until he slept, when they would visit him in vivid color. As they always would, as they always did.

He could turn his feet toward the temples. With the moving of Het-Hert, that was where the majority of the town's populace will be, but while there will be some celebration, there will be no feast. The feasting, should it take place at all in a lean year, won't be for another two hands of days, when the Goddess would reach Bahdet. Any food to be found at the temples will be sparse, and the people thick, the chances of being caught elevated ridiculously. It would be too easy to be spotted accidentally with so many pairs of eyes around. And with some of those eyes belonging to the priests…

The boy breaks into a slow trot, heading in the direction of the river, at an angle that will deliver him to a place well upstream from the temples and their crowds. In a day of celebration, there would be many taking the opportunity to lounge, and there would be those who would pay their respects to the departing Goddess while avoiding the crowds at the temples. There will be those who choose to be beside the water as Het-Hert's barque floated by, in comparative privacy and real coolness. The boy finds he agrees with the coolness wholeheartedly. So much walking in the sun and heat has drained him even further, his head is starting to feel strange, heavy and light at the same time and stuffed with wool.

With trembling limbs, he speeds as well he can toward the river, part of a prayer, unfamiliar in its disuse, rising to his lips:

"_May I receive the loaves which are before You,  
>And the victuals of Your Temple."<em>

_Pray to Gods,_ he thinks. _But carry out deeds with your own hands._

When he arrives by the riverside, there are many clustered along its banks, more than he had thought there would be. Not a solid mass of people, but rather a long line of small groups strung like beads on a string, it is still an impressive number. The boy hesitates a moment, thinking to turn back and try his luck at housebreaking, hoping he would be so lucky as to pick one without even a single resident or slave to catch him. But then he sees that nearly all of those by the water have taken the opportunity to enjoy their position to the fullest and brought picnics. Along the bank of the Nile, there _was_ a feast going on, albeit one from many sources.

The boy cannot turn away from such bounty. Moving stealthily, he moves upstream, his left eye on the picnickers, waiting for a set best suited to his needs.

What he eventually finds is more than he had dared hope for. It's a pair of figures, waited on by a third whose role is to remain unobtrusively in the background until needed. He ignores the third and focuses his attention on the reclining couple.

They are obviously well off, it shows in the whiter than white kilt of the man, the fine linen sheath of the woman, in the braided wigs and jewelry of both. They converse easily with each other, and since they have set their place father from any others than usual to enjoy more privacy, the boy has more than ample cover amongst the reeds to draw close without drawing attention to himself. Ducking into the thick growth along the bank, he crawls toward them along his belly, pushing stalks out of his way when he must, but avoiding moving anything where he can. Mud and stones slide along his chest, belly and legs as he progresses, staining his kilt even further, but he doesn't care. His mind is focused entirely on his targeted pair and the basket of food they brought with them.

He gets close, closer than is probably necessary or safe to remain unseen, close enough to make out some of the details of his chosen 'prey'. They are a couple, not brother and sister, of that he is certain; the age gap between them is too great and certain features speak to different parentages. Whether the relationship after that is one of two lovers, a married pair or a man and his mistress is impossible to tell. Their comparatively secluded position on the river might be suggestive, or might simply be their desire for privacy. The boy cares not in any case, as it does not pertain to nor affect his primary concern of the basket that rests between them.

It's large-ish, but not too large for a boy of his size to manage, and he attempts to calculate how much it might contain. Against the mouthwatering conclusion he comes to, he takes away how much the pair seems to be eating, how much they might continue to eat, and attempts to guess how long he will have to wait before they decide to take an after-meal stroll along the water.

That will be the time to make his move, when the couple moves along. A moment is all he needs, just a moment and a small head start and he can spring up, snatch up the basket and be off again before anyone knows what happened. His only real concern for such a brilliant strategy lies with the slave, hovering near her masters. There is no way to know if, what they rise for their walk, if she will be commanded by their sides or if she will remain by the food. Reluctantly, the boy must concede that her place will most likely be with the basket, to keep away hungry rats such as himself. If she does stay, then the challenge is how to get at the basket? If her attention wanders, or if she leaves for a moment for whatever reason, then small issue. If she doesn't…

The boy fingers the long, thin scrap of cloth tucked at the waist of his kilt. He isn't the best shot with the sling, he can't bring down enough game to live off of, at best his skill would bring in a rare treat a time or two in several hands of days. But a human figure, even one as slim as the girl slave, so near and unmoving, wouldn't prove to be a difficult target. He won't aim for her pretty head – an urchin who is a thief is bad enough, one who is a killer stands no chance of survival – he needs only distract her. A strike to her shoulder or back, enough to stave off any pursuit…

But if he does strike her, she will cry out, alerting not only her masters, but _anyone_ within earshot. And he would have to stand up in order to use the sling, shattering any stealth he had before, alerting his target, ruining the whole plan.

The boy lets out a heavy breath, a silent sigh of frustration, and takes his hand away from the sling.

His thoughts already on her, the boy eyes the slave girl warily. Slaves make him nervous. He knows that, should he ever be caught, either in his few stints at thieving or just as a rootless drifter squatting in the empty hut, slavery is the likeliest fate that awaits him. Placement in a foster home is an unrealistic hope, and slavery offers his captors more than throwing him in gaol. And if anyone were to discover where it was he came from, the name of the village he had been born in that even now was falling to ruins in the wind, not so far to the north… he could expect even worse than prison or enslavement.

While possibly not the worst of fates, the boy avoids slavery like plague. Slaves have certain rights, he knows, and are entitled to such things as clothing, shelter, reasonable care should they become ill or injured, and food. And if a slave won the favor of his or her owner they might gain privileges, small freedoms, or on rare occasions, freedom itself. But the boy, for all his painful youth, is no fool. There are tales told that even his ears can catch of what sometimes becomes of the youngest slaves, male and female alike. He is self-aware enough to know his coloring, his paler-than-moonlight hair and his purple eyes, make him unique, if not particularly beautiful, and therefore a prize for someone's private collection. He has no desire to become the body slave of some aging merchant, whatever tempting morsels he might be offered in return.

Besides which, the thought of _belonging_ to another in any capacity, to do their bidding, twists his entrails in a way that has nothing to do with food, or lack thereof.

The wind changes, and suddenly the boy is drooling, his stomach cramping hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. He can smell the food the couple have brought with them. Seeing at a distance wasn't so much an issue; he could pretend it wasn't there, that they were handling anything other than food and keep a hold of his focus. But with the scent of roast duck and fresh bread in his nostrils, practically able to taste it on his tongue, he almost groans with sheer want of it.

Desperately he tries to find some other thing to distract himself, for if he allows himself to focus overlong on the delicious smells, there will be no chance at a successful filching. He drags his eyes to the couple, his attention to who they might be and what they are saying rather than what they are eating.

The man is obviously a court man, his especially fine horsehair wig of hundreds of braids, each tipped with a tiny red bead, his fresh kilt and many flashing rings all mark him as such. Were there any doubt, the lady at his side soon dispels it.

"How did you find your time at the palace?" she asks in a sweet voice, tossing her head to a rattling of her own beaded wig. Her dark, kohl rimmed eyes sparkle with mirth. There is some meaning to her question that is lost on the eavesdropping thief. "Did you see Pharaoh?"

Her companion laughs, a full, happy laugh that belies his years. He is an old man of more than thirty, but his laugh is young. "No, no. I am far too lowly a functionary, as well you know," he adds with a shaking finger, to which the girl only grins, "to ever approach the Holy One with aught but the back of my head offered up to the bottom of his sandal."

The girl pouts and raises a small jar to her lips, wine, beer or possibly plain water. A quick look shows the boy there are several sealed jars beside the basket. "I hoped you had perhaps but glimpsed him, moving from place to place, as you spent time within the palace."

"Alas, such pleasures were not mine to enjoy, beloved."

The girl takes this in and appears to grow thoughtful, gazing up the river, perhaps checking if she can spot the barque making its start. The man allows the silence, content to watch his 'beloved' and soak in the warmth of the day. The slave girl remains impassive. Hidden in the reeds, a small boy's stomach protests the wait when sustenance is so obviously near at hand. The mud begins to itch at his sides, a dry strand of grass tickles his face, and an insect begins the long crawl from his calf up his leg. It takes more of his control than it should just to remain still.

"What of the little Hawk-in-Nest?" the woman asks at last. "The young prince, did you see him?"

The man has his back to the boy and he is facing downriver, towards the temples to watch for the barque, and the boy has positioned himself upriver – for an easier escape path when it's needed – so there's no way to see his expression, but there is a fond smile in his voice as he replies. "Ah, yes. The young prince I did see. He's an energetic one! Ready to fledge any moment, his nurses are kept running just to keep up with him."

The woman is clearly delighted. "Such good news!" she exclaims, her face lit like the sun. "Such a strong young prince will undoubtedly make a fine Pharaoh of Egypt. The Gods look kindly on us!"

"Indeed," the man agrees, still speaking affectionately. "We are blessed to have such as our Pharaoh and his son. What other land in the world can claim so powerful and kindly a ruler as he, who beat back the barbarians three years ago? Truly, the prince's birth at that time could be nothing but the highest blessing!"

"His or ours', dear one?" the woman asks teasingly. The man chuckles in response, and even the slave girl allows herself to smile at their conversation, taken in by the charm of the subject.

They continue to talk animatedly back and forth, about the Pharaoh and his son, about the Festival, and about the good fortune of Egypt in general, who still manages to celebrate even in a comparatively poor year. The boy, however, no longer listens. His mind has abruptly turned inward, hate and fury of unexpected intensity gripping him, coiling around his spine and squeezing until it becomes hard to breathe.

These people, who a moment ago he only thought of as unsuspecting providers, he suddenly loathes with every ounce of his body. He hates them for their comfort, their happiness, their sheer stupidity. Speaking of the Pharaoh as a benevolent benefactor when it was he that ordered the murder of his village, his entire people, in the most grotesque of ways. Lounging and congratulating themselves in their contentment while not ten yards away, in the mud, lies a victim of this 'great Pharaoh', starved down to the skin and bone, left to fend for himself. How dare they, how _dare_ they be so comfortable, their lives so perfect when he is all alone? He hates them all, Pharaoh, his brat, these people and their slave, the priests at the temples, the cheering crowds, the Gods themselves. He hates them, hates, _hates, __hates_.

HATES.

The boy's body suddenly seems to seize, his hands gripping into the mud and rock, his spine tries to curl, but cannot go far. His eyes are so wide they are in danger of leaving his head, his throat freezes around what might have become a scream.

He feels strange, something somewhere is twisting and tearing and stretching all at once and he can't control it. He wants to cry out, he doesn't care if he's heard anymore or not, yet he can't, his voice has been stolen from him. And overlaying it all, still the overwhelming sense of hate, turning his vision red, then white and filling his nostrils with the sharp, heavy scent of blood. Then there was –

- _blood and screams and_ –

- mud and stones being shoved under his ragged nails as he gripped, trying to hold on to a world fleeing from him, and –

- heat unlike anything he's ever felt before and something _pressing_ the base of his spine and –

- finally he can breathe, he gasps, tastes and smells mud, hears the woman nearby call out a question but –

- there's a rushing noise in his ears that's not from the river and he can't stand up, his legs and arms refuse to respond –

- _terror and darkness_ –

- pain is ripping him to shreds, tearing at his flesh from his toes to the roots of his hair, leaving nothing between untouched and he can hear someone coming –

- he'll be caught, _caught_ and dragged away and made a slave and he needs to get away but he can't _move_ –

- _why must you run?_ –

- everything hurts, what's going on, need to get away, she's coming closer! –

- _who's to blame?_ –

- they are, they are, _they are!_ –

With a snap, the boy's head comes up from where it had been lolling. Through a haze of white, he sees a slender brown hand reaching through the reeds, ready to part them, to find him. A voice is calling, concerned but firm. The boy sees only a hand that is ready to grab him and clap him in shackles. His lips already pulled back in unconscious grimace, the boy opens his mouth and lets loose a scream of rage and hate, all for anyone who dare come near him.

- stretching, tearing, _pain_ –

White takes all of the boy's sight for a moment, his vision comes back just in time to see the hand retreat quickly, and something white and shining and large flashing through the stalks in pursuit. There's a brief scream from the other side, soon followed by more, birthed from other throats. The sound of footfalls, running, and the crashing of brush comes not long after, growing steadily fainter.

The boy lies gasping in the mud for less than half a minute, feeling light, dizzy, and oddly cold. Then he jumps up, adrenaline burning through him. A quick glance tells him all he needs to know: the couple and their slave are gone, leaving their basket alone and unguarded. He doesn't know what happened to him, nor what made the trio abandon their picnic, but it doesn't matter. He crashes through the reeds separating him from the precious basket of food and falls on it. He snatches up two of the sealed jars and the small, partially eaten roasted duck, tosses them in, lifts the basket up and then –

He's away, bolting for his life up the bank of the Nile. He sprints until his breath begins to wheeze, then stops suddenly, crouching low in the tall grasses and listens, his ears straining for any telltale sound of pursuit. When he hears nothing but the wild beating of his own heart he takes three deep breaths, clutches the pilfered basket closer to his body and runs again. It is heavy – wonderfully, gloriously heavy! – but on no terms will he put it down. The basket and its contents have become his life, he will not give them up.

He continues his escape, running in brief bursts of speed and crouching in slightly longer periods of rest, eyes and ears well open. It is the best method of escape he's yet discovered. It got him away quickly while forcing him not to run blindly, the pauses giving him enough time to pick and choose a route. Should he need a longer burst of speed from a real chase, his pauses will have saved enough of his wind to manage it. Hopefully.

Finally, when he feels his legs won't let him rise again, the boy stops. He is far from where he began, far from _any_ of the people situated along the riverbank, the only sounds reaching him being the flow of the river itself, the tiny breeze through the reeds and distant temple bells. He won't feel completely safe until he reaches his hut, but for now he is safe enough. Until he feels strong enough to continue, he can sort through his bounty.

On top there is, of course, the two sealed jars of most likely beer and the duck, and as he digs down deeper he finds two small loaves of barley bread, glazed with honey and sprinkled with seeds, dates, another two jars, two honey cakes and, glory of glories, half a melon.

The boy openly gapes at this last treasure. A melon! And in a slim year! A low ranking functionary or not, to afford such a luxury was rare, indeed, and now it is his!

At the very bottom of the basket he finds a small metal knife, another prize no less valuable than the edibles, and he uses it to carve away a small sliver of the tender, sweet melon flesh. It hits his tongue and a shiver goes up his spine, his face pinches in a happy smile. So sweet! He thinks his teeth might shatter from it, or he might faint of sheer pleasure. He does not faint, though, and moves from the melon to sample a little of each of his prizes. As much as he wants to simply gorge on everything the basket contains, he knows better than to try. An unfortunate incident about a year previous taught him the lesson of patience well.

He eats half of one date, finds that it is also sweet, and very tart and sticky, it makes his mouth hurt a little. The bread is heaven, crisp and crackling outside, tender inside, the seeds and honey glaze a beautiful addition to the barley and yeast flavor of the bread. The honey cakes are, of course, sweet, but filling, or would be if he ate more than a bite. Then there is the duck. It's been so long since he has eaten the flesh of anything other than fish improperly cooked over smoky fires that his fingers tremble a little as he carves away a tiny portion with the knife. It practically drips with grease, and melts on his tongue, flavors exploding in his mouth. Tears sting at his eyes briefly. He licks away every trace of the precious fat off his fingers, not wasting a single delicious bit.

There is a rustling amongst the reeds and rushes from downriver and the boy freezes. If it's one of the townsfolk finally caught up with him, he will have to abandon the food he's already taken from the basket, but he might make off with the basket itself and the majority of the foodstuffs if he makes a quick escape of it.

He never get a chance to try, as the rustler of grasses appears before he can get a single foot beneath him.

What pokes from between the slender stalks would have many fleeing, and in fact had, the boy realizes with startling clarity, but he feels no fear at all. He ought to, he knows, but for some reason fear does not come. The head is large, arrow shaped, and white as bone, like the thick, sinuous, limbless body that it's attached to. The mouth, when the serpent opens it to greet the boy with a soft hiss, is black, blacker than kohl. It looks at the boy with curious intelligence, only a touch of the usual reptilian chill lurking in the corners of its wide eyes.

Feeling himself to be in a dream, the boy beckons the serpent, holding a hand low for it to touch.

Without hesitation, the serpent slithers close, touches the boy's fingertips with a flicking black tongue. It tickles and the boy chuckles, shocking himself. How long has it been since he last laughed? The serpent regards him, regards his arm, then begins to climb the thin limb. There is a very brief moment of concern as the weight begins to tug his arm, but it dissipates almost immediately. The heaviness is comforting, a confirmation he's not alone. He wonders why it is he's not afraid of this serpent, when it could so easily kill him, but then the reptile's eyes come even with his, and he doesn't wonder anymore.

They are not a serpent's eyes, for no serpent was ever conceived that had such wide, knowing, _purple_ eyes. They are _his_ eyes, violet as the dusk and knowing, outlined by glistening scales. Deep in his being, the boy knows this serpent is _his_. In a way that he cannot explain, even to himself, this serpent is _him_.

Licking his lips nervously, the boy whispers, "Little God, what is your name?"

The serpent does not answer, but in that same strange way he knows it will not hurt him, that it is a part of him, he knows that it _wants_ to, that it _tries_, but can't manage. It is too weak, he realizes. If it could be made stronger, than it might be able to. With one hand, the boy carves away a small piece of duck and offers it to the serpent, who flicks its tongue at the morsel, then takes it up almost delicately and swallows it whole.

"One day, you'll be strong enough to tell me," the boy swears, stoking the smooth head with his free hand. The serpent's eyes half-close, it leans into his hand, enjoying the caress.

_And one day_, the boy thinks to himself, _you and I might grow strong enough to topple the Pharaoh that slaughtered my village. Then maybe my rage will ease, and the nightmares will cease_.

From deep within the boy, so deep and intrinsic now to his being he hardly hears it, another, half remembered voice whispers, "Soon…"

The scene expands, widens, like it is being seen by a bird who is taking flight, until the boy and serpent are lost, two specks on the Nile bank.

Awareness comes sooner this time, and Ryou Bakura knows who he is. He wonders if this is a dream he will remember, or if it, like the one before, will be forgotten…

…

_**A/N2:**__ You know, I'm not sure if I find the Ancient Egypt parts more annoying or enjoyable to write… ah, well. History time!_

_**The Festival of the Beautiful Reunion:**__ Right, for this I'm just going to give everyone an excerpt from the site I did a lot of research on. Anything more you're going to have to look up yourselves. Sorry, I'm not an encyclopedia. At least not here, I'm not. __"The festival was celebrated in the third month of Shomu, which means June-July, when HetHert travelled from her home at Dendera to go 180 km (110 miles) south to Edfu and the temple of Heru. There she would stay for two weeks while the marriage was consecrated inside the temple. She was greeted and celebrated as the 'Returning Eye of Re', which promised fertility and renewed life to the earth and to humans. After the fourteen days, HetHert would sail back to Dendera to await the birth of the child conceived at Edfu -__Har-mau (Hor-sma tawy)__ or Greek: Harsomtus: Horus the Uniter."__ This was found at the site triple 'w' - _dot_ - philae - _dot_ - nu - _slash_ - akhet - _slash_ - index - _dot_ - html.__  
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_**Dendera:**__ If you paid attention to the last paragraph, then that should tell you where our little orphan is, now. The town of Dendera, which is, while by no means __**close**__ to Qurna (my real life model for the village of Kul Elna) it is conceivable that he would be able to make it from there to Dendera over the course of three years. So look at that, I'm being semi-clever! :D_

_**Prayer:**__ The prayer that our kid mutters to himself is part of a hymn to Het-Hert, found in the XIth Dynasty Temple at Deir El-Bahari. I found that passage fitting for him at the time, and it's more than reasonable to suppose he would know some prayers off by heart, even given his circumstances. _

_**Food:**__ Again, trying to remain truthful to history, but if I've made any glaring mistakes, feel free to let me know. This is how I learn, everyone, by researching and being corrected when I stick my foot in my mouth._

_**Serpent:**__ Yeah, anyone want to take a guess on what/who this is and the significance? It'll all be revealed, if not explained, later on, and no doubt everyone knows perfectly well… but c'mon. Take a guess. ;3_

_Again, I'm not sure if I'm having a ball or being completely frustrated by the Ancient Egyptian memories… probably both. I've never done this much research on a particular subject for a fic before in my life, and I'm __**still**__ not sure I'm getting everything right; in fact I'm pretty sure I'm mucking it up pretty badly… ah well. __**Thank you for reading and putting up with my horrible grasp of history and geography, everyone! Love!**_


	6. Part V

_**A/N:**__ It's been awhile since this has been updated. My apologies, everybody!  
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_**Warnings: **__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled? Then read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Disclaimer: **__Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Part V

Raven Ehtar

…

Ryou woke slowly from heavy dreams. He was starving.

The boy lay on his futon, silently staring up at his ceiling for a while as he sorted out his most recent memories. They seemed a little muddled, though thankfully not as muddled as those from the day before last. First was the question of why was he so hungry, which was easy enough to remember – he hadn't eaten any dinner last night. And he had skipped his dinner because he hadn't wanted to face his mother and sister because…

Ryou scrunched up his face experimentally, then winced at the pain that shot through his cheek and eye. Yes, he remembered that right enough. He had avoided everyone the night before because he'd received a good knock from Taro before coming home. That knock, if it hadn't become a winning shiner while he slept, was certainly giving a good impression of it by the feel. Gingerly, he felt the flesh around his eye with his fingers. It was warm, warmer than the rest of his face, and still a little puffy, but at least his eye hadn't swollen shut. It wasn't even enough to make opening his eye a struggle, and that was lucky. He'd had bad shiners before, and they were a pain to deal with.

But of course, remembering the events of the previous day brought back to mind all of the worries he'd had as well, paramount among them how he was going to get through today both at home and at school without having to explain his injuries or earn any more before he made it home again. He would have to get by his mother first, and then all of his teachers without their noticing his swollen face. His mother he might manage, but not his teachers, so he would need some very plausible excuse why he had a black eye without getting anyone who would retaliate into trouble, and then he would either have to kowtow to any and all bullies that crossed him today or somehow avoid them entirely.

He didn't think he would be able to avoid the bullies. Not today. He remembered all too well the _reason_ Taro had made him a punching bag. He remembered the way he had gone slightly mad and fought back against his most ardent bully two days before, and had challenged him so that the fat boy felt the need to smack him back down to his low rung in the ladder. The lesson came, as lessons from Taro so often did, at the end of his fist. And somehow, for some reason, Ryou had fought back _again_. He'd returned one blow for another and had been prepared to deal out more before snapping back to his senses. He could remember how his world had narrowed until it seemed to contain nothing but himself and Taro, how the rage had twisted his insides into knots and left a hot, sick trembling in his limbs. He had been more than willing to beat Taro's gloating face to a miserable pulp, until his piggy eyes wouldn't be able to see out from the swelling and his words would be slurred through fattened lips. He had been willing, eager even, to do all of that and more, when the rage that had filled him like a consuming fire went out all at once. He was left with nothing but his own weak, trembling self, facing an incensed boy much bigger than himself.

And he still had no idea where it had gone.

Perhaps more to the point, he didn't know where it had come _from_. Ryou often felt anger for those that made his life a small, living hell, but he never seriously thought about fighting back as he had. His usual method was to attempt invisibility, to become so small and unnoticeable that everyone would just leave him alone. It didn't really work as well as he would have liked, but it was better than picking fights. At least, he tried to convince himself of that. But then this rage had taken hold of him and had him acting out, fighting back before he could think and stop himself. Was it just repressed fantasies finally breaking free, or was he going insane?

Something lurking at the back of his mind, some blurred memory he couldn't quite bring into focus made him want to say that he really was going mad.

Ryou's alarm went off, the volume twice as loud as he remembered setting it, and he nearly put out his own eye with the fingers gingerly feeling his bruise when he jumped. It was an auspicious start to the day.

…

Compared to the morning he'd had on the previous day, this one was a vast improvement, save one or two details. He woke this time with plenty of time to get ready for school and without his mother breathing down his neck, so he was able to wash in the bathroom relatively leisurely before breakfast. In addition to just feeling better for washing his face and brushing his hair and teeth properly, it gave him time to catalogue the previous day in more detail. He wondered if not having this time yesterday could have been part of the reason for his disorientation, where not having the time to look over all the memories had made them less material. Among other things he remembered that he actually had finished his homework, which was more of a relief than it should have been. With everything else he could expect today, he did _not_ want getting into trouble for unfinished assignments to be one of them.

While washing his face he inspected his eye and found that it didn't look as swollen as it felt to his fingers. But it had colored during the night, the flesh about an inch away from his eye and a little right on the lids turning a deep bluish purple, with the promise of more coloring to come. There would be no hiding it from his mother as he had hoped, but it still felt a lot worse than it looked.

He also found, in the process of getting dressed, that the golden ring was around his neck, tucked under the collar of his pajama top. That made Ryou stop a moment and scour his memories, which he had _thought_ were without any gaps. He _knew_ that he'd taken off the ring before he'd gone to sleep. He could remember slipping it over his head and putting it on his bedside table. But then… _when_ had he taken it off? Was it before he'd started his homework, or when he'd sat down to write some more of his RPG plotline, or was it just before he'd put his head down on his pillows to sleep? And now that he thought about it… was he so sure he _couldn't_ remember feeling the cold metal against his skin while he'd lain in bed vainly waiting for sleep to claim him? He wasn't so sure now, although he _was_ sure he had taken it off, which made no sense at all. The more he thought about it, the more muddled he became.

He could recall wishing for a friend whom he could rely on, and for all of his enemies to evaporate. He remembered the familiar sense of despair that had welled up inside him at the hopelessness of such a wish, the hot feel of tears trying to come up and choke him. Then, what must have been the beginning of a dream before he had even properly fallen asleep, he was sure there'd been someone in his room. Someone who had stood beside his bed, and smiled, and said something; something that had been comforting as he slipped down in to sleep, but which he couldn't recall now.

And if that had been the beginnings of his dreams, then what had the rest of them been like? He couldn't remember much, except maybe… a river? A big, wide river and… his school. His school wasn't anywhere near a river, nor any other body of water, but it had been a dream, and dreams almost never followed rules. And that was all he could remember of his dreams, though he felt sure that there had been much more to them and that he had wanted to remember, even as he'd been in the middle of them.

After getting dressed in a clean set of school clothes, Ryou gave up remembering as a lost cause. It's not as though they were important, and there were some things today that _did_ require his attention.

He didn't notice until much later that after dressing he had automatically put the ring back on and tucked it under his shirt, so distracted was he.

At breakfast, which he had enough time to sit down to this time, he was able to eat for about three minutes before his mother, who had been in the kitchen, came out and noticed the bruise over his eye. Ryou was impressed, through the dread of finally being discovered.

"Ryou, what happened to your eye?" she asked, her voice going high as she put down her plate and leaning across to look closely at his face. She caught his chin in her fingers and tilted his head to the light so she could see. "Did you get into another fight at school?"

Ryou jerked his head out of his mother's grip and looked away, his hair falling over and hiding the left side of his face from sight. "No, mother, I didn't get into a fight." It was interesting to Ryou how his mother always assumed that when he came home with injuries that he 'got into a fight' rather than having had the stuffing knocked out of him. She thought it more likely that her small, thin boy was dishing out as much as he was getting rather than getting ganged up on. He just considered it another sign that she knew very little about her son. …Of course this time she was right, but that was a major deviation from the norm that even he didn't understand.

Amane, nearly finished with her own breakfast, looked up from her bowl. "You got into a fight?"

"No," Ryou nearly snapped, irritated and embarrassed. "I just fell down at recess. I hit my face and got a bruise, that's all."

His sister pouted at him, her face worried as she tried to get a look at his eye behind the curtain of his hair. But it was his mother that had his attention, her reaction that he was watching the closest. Her lips were pursed together into a thin line, and she raised an eyebrow at him, every inch of her expression registering skepticism. For a minute Ryou began to panic, remembering how she had, on two previous occasions, gone to his school after he'd come home with bruises to chew out everyone she could find, from cafeteria staff to the principle. On both occasions very little had been done, but Ryou had been thoroughly humiliated and an even tastier target for ridicule. He had no desire to repeat the experience, and his mother's expression was not reassuring on that point.

But in the end he needn't have worried. Whether she believed his story about falling down or not – and he was fairly certain that she didn't – she didn't make an issue of it. Unreasonably, Ryou felt a little disappointed that she had given up that fight so easily, when he should be grateful. Rather than insisting that Ryou tell her the truth, or marching on the school herself in a righteous fury, or even admonishing him to be more careful when playing on school grounds, she drug him to her vanity a few minutes before they had to leave to catch the bus and used her foundation to cover up the worst of the bruise. Ryou quickly weighed the pros and cons of letting his mother put makeup on him before school. On one hand having it be less obvious for everyone to see the injury, but on the other was the risk of someone noticing that he was wearing _makeup_. Even worse than long hair or bringing figures into school – doing anything girly.

He didn't have too much choice in the matter, though, as his mother sat him down and went to work immediately. He comforted himself that the idea was to conceal something you didn't want to see, not bring attention to what you were applying, so nobody might see the foundation at all. He could hope, anyway, and there were always the bathroom sinks if it was too obvious to deal with.

So Ryou went to school much less rushed than the day before, with his mother's foundation smeared over his sore eye and growing trepidation of what he would come back to, what sorts of revenge might be dished out for him.

He was vaguely worried what his own reaction to such revenge might be; if his own body would betray him again, and what sort of dark cravings might spring up from his psyche.

…

Whatever it was that Ryou might have been expecting on returning to school – Taro lying in wait for him around some corner as soon as he stepped off of the bus, threatening looks as he walked down the halls, an entire group of the school jerks ganged together to stomp on this one upstart with Taro and Suichi at the head of it – he got none of it. Instead it was a perfectly normal beginning to the school day, save one little detail. There wasn't a trace of hostility aimed his way, which was such an unexpected sensation that his stress levels actually spiked until he realized what the strange vibe was: _Not_ being hunted.

He made it all the way to his classroom, to his seat and unpacked all of his books without being molested or taunted, and he began to feel as though he were experiencing the calm before the storm, that he should be more frightened than ever. There must be something worse than he had ever been through before headed his way, but he had no idea what it could be.

It wasn't until class began that Ryou got his first clue why the general tenor in the building seemed so different. He sat in the row of desks furthest from the front, and knew where everyone sat by heart. It was a hobby of his to play memorization games, to play with the ordering of the seats in his head like it was a game of chess, and to watch the interplay of passed notes, whispered secrets and sneaky harassment that happened while class was in session. So it was that when the bell rang, signaling the beginning of the day and everyone was meant to be firmly planted in their seats, that Ryou saw there was one desk conspicuously vacant: Taro's.

And if he thought that maybe the larger boy was tardy, that was soon dispelled by the teacher's first announcement following roll. He was out sick, had been taken to the hospital by his family that morning, in fact. The teacher, obviously struggling with how little information he had or was allowed to pass on to his class, and his desire to reassure them. He compromised by telling them that while they, the school, weren't exactly sure what was wrong, Taro showed every sign of making a full recovery and being back in class in no time.

One student, a girl by the name of Yukiko who sat in the second row and was the only girl known to have a soft spot for the class jerk, asked that if they didn't know what was wrong, then why was he in the hospital? What were his symptoms?

After a show of hesitation and a few more prompts from other students – who cared less for Taro's wellbeing but were interested in learning what was wrong nonetheless – their teacher finally cracked. He told them, with many warnings not to spread the news beyond their class, that Taro was in a coma, and no one knew why.

That caused a stir like nothing seen before in the school, and despite the warning lain on them to keep it to themselves, the news that Taro was in a coma spread almost instantly from one class to the next. Taro was unpopular in school, and while Ryou had been aware of that, he hadn't known just _how_ universally disliked he was. It seemed that outside Taro's own little circle of friends, who shared his attitudes and personal hobby of picking on anyone and everyone he thought he could, opinion on him was all sharply against him. With the one inexplicable exception of Yukiko. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised at the fellow feeling floating around the school. After all, he was far from Taro's only target for cruelty. There were others who had felt his harsh sense of humor and gone home sporting scrapes and bruises, cursing his name. But he was still surprised to see how far and wide the dislike of Taro went; with how many people Ryou had at least this one thing in common. It was a small torture they shared, and Ryou felt an unfamiliar camaraderie spring up between them, however faint, at the discovery.

As days passed and there was no sign or word of Taro improving, rumor and speculation began to circulate around the school, as would happen when large groups of children are left only their imaginations to fill in for facts. There were any number of rumors that were going around at any one time, ranging in credulity from the probable to a _shonen_ special. One of the more ridiculous ones that Ryou rather liked was that Taro and his family were actually a small spy cell or vigilante group, and that Taro's coma was due to injuries received while throwing down with some of their enemies at the school itself. Or that Taro was secretly a member of another school's _Yanki_ gang, a young member scouting for recruits in the lower grades before they were snatched up by rivals, and he had gotten into a fight – again at the school – and lost.

As absurd as both of those theories were, they and many others shared the detail that Taro had been found unconscious on school property by the earliest arriving faculty, and that it was from there that he was taken to the hospital. So widely spread was that particular detail that it was generally accepted as fact, and some swore they had heard the teachers themselves talking about it, trying to reason out why the young boy would be on school grounds so late and what could have happened to him while he was there.

Ryou doubted it, whatever other students might swear was true. There were some swearing just as fervently by aliens or fox spirits, so he wasn't convinced. His personal feeling was that it was much more likely that Taro had caught some weird virus and the doctors just hadn't figured out what it was yet. But since the only news they got about Taro was that he wasn't getting any worse, and no one else seemed to be getting sick, he didn't let the idea of a mystery bug worry him.

Far from worried, Ryou was happy, he was _ecstatic_. He was delighted that his bully was gone, whatever the cause that had struck him down. For the first time in longer than he cared to think about, Ryou was free from the constant threat of Taro. There were other bullies to be sure – Suichi was never far from his awareness – but Taro had been his consistent, nagging concern. Without his offending bulk taking room in the school, it was like a physical weight had been lifted away from him and he could breathe at last. He didn't know what was wrong with Taro, and in the end he really didn't care. So long as it kept him far away from school and him, Ryou only hoped that whatever it was continued on indefinitely.

Let Taro stay sick. Ryou was free.

Except that he wasn't free, of course. Not completely. There were other jerks at the school, and it was only a matter of time before the balance was readjusted among them to cover up any gaps left by their fallen comrade. It took nearly a week before it happened, nearly a week of peace to actually concentrate on nothing but schoolwork when he was at school before that balance was restored and Ryou was back on the bullying Rota.

It was Suichi, the evil brat of the school who finally caught up with him, remembering that he existed and hadn't had his self-esteem stomped on for too long. In Taro's continued absence he had found another cohort willing to pal around with him and act as his fists. It was his style, after all, to never be the one who did any of the damage he ordered, and there were plenty of boys who enjoyed feeling like they were in charge without actually doing any of the thinking. Ryou didn't know who he was, but recognized him as one of the troublemakers from Suichi's year that everyone did their best to steer clear of.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been, not by far. It was more of a reminder that whether Taro was around or on the other side of the planet, Ryou was still on the bottom rung of the school hierarchy. He came away from the encounter with little more than a jogged elbow from being pushed into a wall. As well as a reminder for Ryou, he got the impression Suichi was breaking in his new crony, making sure he was trained properly.

And wasn't that a comforting thought?

The next day was worse, more on a par with how things had been before Taro was sent to the hospital. A little rougher, a little bit of jeering of anything that presented itself – and on Ryou there was plenty to choose from – and a parting threat that the next day there would be more of the same. It was almost like Taro had never left, and life began to take on its familiar, exhausting shape again. Ryou prepared himself for a return to that routine and tried not to think too much about what it would have been like if the bully-free life could have continued.

So it was with blank, uncomprehending amazement that he greeted the next morning's post-roll announcement. Both Suichi and a classmate of his, Ryuji, had been taken to the hospital with what appeared to be the same malady as Taro. Taro himself, they were told, hadn't made any progress, but neither had he worsened. There was no need to worry, the teacher hastened to add to his room full of nervously shifting students, but it would be best if everyone practiced especially good hygiene – lots of hand washing – and if anyone felt the _least_ bit ill, to report it right away.

Ryou, sitting at his desk, his expectations for a day of torments jerked out from underneath him, felt a little off balance and bewildered. There was the mild concern that there was some kind of disease running through that no one knew what it was or how to combat it, but that was overwhelmed by a sense of disbelief. He couldn't believe his luck. That this mysterious illness had so far struck down those that had done or meant to do him harm seemed too good to be true. He wondered if he were dreaming, if he would wake and find himself back in his bed, a whole day of school ahead of him, complete with bullies. He prayed not, or that if it were that he would never wake up.

It didn't occur to him to feel pity for the boys who had fallen ill. They had never shown him any, so the sentiment wasn't returned. Nor did it register as particularly odd that not only was it his bullies that were falling ill, but _only_ his bullies. No one else appeared to be even brushed by whatever was going around.

Though, for that last observational failure Ryou could be forgiven, as his bullies did take up a lot of his personal horizon, it was difficult to see beyond them. As the weeks rolled by, though, still with no positive word on Taro, Suichi or Ryuji, more students began to join them in the hospital. All had fallen into comas, all of them were in one way or another considered to be bullies, and the majority of them had little or nothing to do with Ryou directly.

The highly selective epidemic ran through the school with no sign of stopping, and families began to worry about their children. Students themselves were nervous as well, wondering if the virus would have them next. But Ryou's spirits lifted every day. It was like his wishes had been granted, or one of them at least; to be able to walk down the halls without fear! It was something he had long craved, and now that it was his, he was determined to relish it.

Only his dreams troubled him, and their shadow flitted away with the rising sun.

…

Nights were perfectly dark, now. Dark and cold with the sharp bite that promised heavy winter frost. The first snows of the season had yet to blanket the world in its heavy mantle, but it wasn't far away. Each morning found every surface caked in thick frost, the sun reluctant to climb into the cold sky and all too eager to retreat to warmer lands in the evening. At night one was very glad of whatever shelters they had, whatever kept the breathtaking snap away from their flesh, and burrowed into their blankets and futons. A cold wasteland was coming, blowing down the abandoned streets and setting the lamps to crazy dances. Warm homes in which to retreat was something that was greatly appreciated.

In one home, as in many, not a sign of life was to be seen or heard. The hour was late, and all were abed. Each light had been switched off, the TV silenced, all of the kitchen utilities checked, the curtains closed and the locks on the front door all drawn to. If one were to walk from one bedroom to the next, checking to make sure everyone was where they were meant to be, they would find all as it should be. In the largest room was the mother, deeply asleep but still carefully keeping to her own side of the bed. Her husband was often absent, but she kept up the habit, behaving as though he were beside her. It was a source of comfort, a reminder that he whom she loved would not be gone forever, and the cold patch at her side would one day be warm again. In the next bedroom closest to the mother's and absent father's was the little girl's room, arranged and bedecked as suited a young girl who loved all that was pretty or cute, with the girl herself nestled deeply in her blankets, hiding from stray breezes that might catch her.

In the final bedroom of the apartment the shadows were just as deep as everywhere else, but one might, with great effort, just make out the shelves lined with books, the figures and models left out on display and the very neatly arranged texts on the desk. If one listened, one could hear the sound of muffled breathing coming from the futon. Muffled, because the boy sleeping there was buried in his blankets. Though, as the hypothetical listener paused beside him, they would notice it was not peaceful breathing. The breaths of the hidden boy were those of a troubled sleep, uneven and hitching often.

And the boy was not alone. In the deepest corners of his room, the shadows _writhed_.

As the boy tossed in his bed sheets, fighting the nightmares that had become a regular, nightly visitor, the darkness, as innocent as shadows had ever been, churned around the room. Out of natural darkness came something darker, something blacker than shadow and more menacing than nightmare. Night bore no man ill will, but this had an awareness that reached out, that observed, that judged. And it flowed, gathered together, like droplets of spilled ink, beside the boy's futon.

For a time the pool of darkness did nothing, merely lay beside the boy and seemed to observe his quiet struggles. If darkness could be said to watch when it possessed no physical eyes to do so, then this darkness watched the boy as he slept.

After a time the shadows began to move again, to stretch themselves upward and outward, fountaining and twisting itself in different directions so one moment it was tall, the next wide, and the next both but very thin. It was trying to form a shape, but appeared to be struggling. The shadows hesitated after a moment of this, and flickered uncertainly.

They were trying to recall, in whatever it was that passed for memory in a patch of shadow, a form from times long past. It had once been a shape the shadows knew well, but now the memory was blurred and uncertain. The details couldn't be held for long before the memory collapsed in on itself, with the attempt to replicate it soon following. Much easier, the consciousness within the shadows discovered, was to recall the shape it had most recently resided in, even if it had been very brief.

Beside the sleeping boy, the shadows twisted in on themselves, reforming and molding themselves until they became something that looked almost solid, a single entity that sat beside the futon and looked down on the boy with a considering look on its newly formed features.

The shadows had metamorphosed to become a boy. The same boy, in fact, as the one it looked down on.

The doppelganger was a perfect copy of the child that slept so uneasily beside him. From the softness of his skin and the shoulder length, silvery hair to the warm, nut brown eyes and the deep blue school uniform he wore nearly every day. In appearance the two boys, even when right beside each other, were one and the same. But there was something about the shadow-boy, a presence that hung around him like a miasma, clinging to his skin. One would have seen, if they happened to look beyond the first impression of his appearance, that the shadow-spun imposter was very different from the sleeping boy.

Were there any doubt, his eyes would have given him away. They were the proper shape, and the shade of deep brown was flawless, but they were filled with so much anger and hate that anyone caught in their gaze would almost feel it brushing their skin with virulent heat. Right now they were aimed downward, watching his twin as he struggled quietly with his dreams. His breathing was ragged, his limbs shifted in his sleep, seeking escape or respite, and the occasional soft, pathetic mewling sound escaped his lips.

The shadow figure sneered in undisguised contempt.

It was only an expression, a small shift of the features, but it was enough to transform the doppelganger into an entirely different person, as unlike the sleeping boy as it was possible to be while still wearing his face. It turned him into something twisted, evil.

"You are living one of _those_ memories," the shadows said to the boy. His voice, without a throat or tongue to shape the words, _might_ have been the boy's voice, if it were possible to construct a voice out of a whispering wind and the whine of shifting sand.

The boy twisted, possibly at the sound of the strange voice, but did not wake. He wouldn't wake, _couldn't_, until the memory he was within had played itself out to the end. He was effectively trapped within his own mind and another's life until dawn came.

The figure snorted, a sound so soft none would have heard it even had they listened for it, and leaned back on his elbows, narrowed nut brown eyes on his host. There was nothing to be done this night, and the streets were freezing, dangerous. It was best to remain indoors for now, and in doing that, there was only his host to watch over until he woke. His host, who was still going through the ancient memories each night as dreams. It wasn't a pleasant process. There were so few in the shadow-boy's memories that were not horrible, for this boy to experience them was a muddled nightmare. Nor was it entirely without its share of discomfort for the shadows. Without a reason to use his host's body and distract himself for the night it would be a long vigil.

It was irritating, this dependence on his host, the holder of the millennium ring. But there had to be an equal exchange between them, give _and_ take for the bond to be complete. If it was all one sided, then it would all fall to pieces. He needed the boy's body to live in this time period, but he also needed access to those memories that allowed him to speak the strange language that surrounded him, that gave him vital knowledge of this world so far removed from his own, that told him who 'his' family was and how to interact with them without raising their suspicions. To have all of those memories, then some of his life in Egypt had to be given to his host.

More than that, though, the bond itself required the exchange, the sharing of memory and identity. Those threads that bound their souls together, begun by the convergence of memory and experience and a sympathetic resonance, were multiplied and strengthened by the exchanges. The link would be strengthened beyond the point of casual severance.

Such a bond could not exist and only one of them be aware of it.

But then, it didn't follow his plans that his host become _aware_ of what was happening. Not yet, at least. The bond was still developing, it could be broken; his host could escape him if he knew. So he hid the memories from his host. The boy relived pieces of his life as he slept, and while he was dreaming he could remember every other dream-memory he'd had, but on waking they would be covered over in a mantle of forgetfulness. All the boy could recall when he was awake was perhaps an impression or two and that the night had been full of dreams.

Slowly the boy quieted and grew still in his bed, and the shadow boy seemed to relax. Then he leaned forward, staring intently at his host's face. For a minute he stared, silent, his head cocked to one side. Finally he asked aloud, in a tone that was confused even in its unearthliness. "Why does he weep?"

Difficult as it was to see anything in the deep darkness of the room, it was just possible to make out the boy's face, more serene now than it had been when plagued by nightmarish memory. It was also just possible to make out twin tracks of tears streaming down his cheeks, sneaking out from beneath pale lashes.

Immediately after asking the question the apparition snorted again and answered himself, his voice suddenly rough, what had once been wind and sand becoming gales and grinding stone. "Terror. He is weak, would never have survived these trials had it been he who truly lived them." He paused, considering the boy with a cold eye.

He really was just a child, chosen by the millennium ring. He was even more a child, the figure knew, when considered by the standards of this 'modern' culture. In his, this boy would have been a young man, taking on the responsibilities of adulthood and forging his own way into the world. But there was a line of distinction between boy and man, and this one was still far from crossing it.

And this was his host. A child so weak in himself that he was intimidated by essentially everyone else in his school. He knew enough of the boy's life to know that even other children who were picked on considered his host as a weakling, laughed at him when they thought no one could overhear. But his host could hear them.

He heard them and their taunts and he did _nothing_. He felt the anger rise in his breast and did not act on it. He shoved it aside and let it fester. Because the fear was always greater than the anger.

"Perhaps," he whispered, the sound of stone rolling against stone in the depths of caves, "I should find a more suitable host…"

But that was easier said than done. It was the millennium ring that chose the host, not him. There was a magic involved in the choice, in the binding of their souls. Even so new as it was, one couldn't simply pull away and find another. So long as this boy lived there would be no way to bond with a new host.

Of course, that could be arranged without too much trouble.

The shadows changed, slowly altering themselves to a new shape. The shadow boy reached out a hand, and slowly the fingers lengthened, thinned and sharpened to wicked points, until the hand was a claw, the fingers a set of grasping talons. They moved to the insensible boy, and then halted just shy of grazing one of the pale cheeks, still damp with tears.

"He is weak," the stone and gravel voice said, the talons still spread and ready, but frozen in place. "And he weeps at mere memories of another's life."

The reasoning was sound, the opportunity as choice as one could hope for… yet the hand did not move the final distance. The talons twitched, as though they desired nothing more than to plunge into the flesh lying so defenselessly before them, but they did not act on that desire. Something held them back.

"A weak host can be more easily controlled," the stooping shadow reasoned, the grinding stone tones replaced with shifting sands. And the strength that mattered wouldn't come from the host in any case, the shadows knew, but from _him_. A weak host provided more positive characteristics than negative. Easier to control, easier to deceive and manipulate, easier to appease with gifts, and a weak host who was _known_ to be weak by everyone around him would arouse less suspicion. The only thing he would need a strong host for would be an inner strength, one that could weather the strain of the bond and not burn out or break. And so far his current host was doing exactly that.

Besides which, the millennium ring had chosen _this_ boy…

A talon flicked, diving toward the boy's exposed throat- and came up again with the cord that held the golden ring hooked over a joint.

The shadow boy stared at it, a mixture of reverence and loathing in his eyes as he examined his centuries long prison. In many, many ways, the ring was the start of all the troubles that extended across time and continents, and still it was here, gracing the neck of a boy on an island country.

If only he knew what it was that hung under his shirt, laying against his skin every day.

The ring had chosen this boy, this clueless weakling child. The ring possessed a kind of consciousness of its own, the shadows knew, and was more than capable of judging those who came into contact with it, of choosing who was worthy. It could sense the threads of fate, and choose its wearer accordingly. And it had picked _this_ out of all the possibilities of all the countries of all the generations. This was the boy that it considered worthy.

The shadows glared accusingly at the ring, which only stared back enigmatically with its single golden pupil, the dangling points swaying through the air innocently.

Heavy gold held aloft by shadow, the figure slowly lowered it back down to his host without disturbing his slumber. His face still told of an internal struggle, one on which his life hung precariously.

Abruptly the figure leaned forward and down, bringing his face close to that of his host. Thrusting his face to the crook of the boy's neck, he inhaled deeply.

To the boy it would have felt no more than the passing from light to shade, when shadows fall over one's skin. To the shadows, though, it was much more profound. A shudder passed through him, and he inhaled again. He could smell him: sweat and soap, sun and fear, pulse and breath. He was _alive_. A part of the shadows could remember what it was to be alive – truly alive and not co-opting life from another, and that part of the shadows _ached_.

_Alive_… he yearned for that simple, greedy, vibrant spark. He wanted what it was that made this boy smell so good.

The shadows pulled away from his host, reluctantly, the long talons melting away and the rest of his body slowly fading to become one with the darkness. He would trust to the ring that it knew what it was doing, and he would gather his strength, guard his host diligently until the time came when he could act as more than a shadow. With fate and patience he could accomplish anything, and he knew he had patience.

A final whisper insinuated itself into the room, all snaking sand carried on a breeze that did not exist, defensive and hopeful.

"_Perhaps he is stronger than he looks…"_

…

_**A/N2:**__ Ooo, spooky!_

_I'm pretty sure there's nothing in this chapter that needs explaining or clarifying, so I'll just say that anyone who's read the manga will probably have a better idea of where this is going, as the original source material has more background story on Ryou than the anime. Enjoying the build-up, everyone? ;3_

**_Edit:_**_ Of course I realize after posting that there are a couple terms not everyone might be familiar with…_

_Shonen: 'Shonen' is a word that basically means 'young boy,' and is best known to the fans of manga and anime (at least in the US) as part of the title to manga zine, 'Shonen Jump.' In this context I'm using the word to refer to those comics/manga that appeal to young boys._

_Yanki: This one is a little harder to explain. For those who don't know and come from a more Western background, think of it as the Yakuza for high school or really hardcore punk rock. It's a style, it's a lifestyle and it's just a way of lashing out at society. The general frame of mind in pop culture seems to be that if you begin as a Yanki, you'll graduate up to Yakuza, but that's not always true._

_**As always, thank you for reading and your patience, beautiful minions!**_


	7. Part VI

_**A/N:**__ So this fic has been neglected for far too long. More than a year since its last update and I don't have any excuse other than the usual that can be expected. Life, distractions, a move, a job change, a minor identity crisis - the usual. But, we're back now, and I'm actually quite eager to get back to my pen to write the next. :)_

_For anyone interested in having some music to go along with this fic, I have started a companion album on 8tracks. Look for me, raven dot ehtar and the mix is under the same name as the fic. :)_

_**Warnings: **__ Spoilers! Haven't made it through __Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World__ manga and don't want it spoiled? Read that first, then come back. __**Also,**__ we will probably have a rating jump to M later on. I'll give a heads up before it happens, but be aware._

_**Chapter Specific Warning:**__ Minor character death._

_**Disclaimer: **__Yu-Gi-Oh!__ and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi._

…

Haunted

Part VI

Raven Ehtar

…

Was it possible for dreams to come true?

It was something that Ryou had found himself wondering for some time now, and the best part was that he wasn't immediately tossing the notion out as ridiculous. It really did seem like it could be possible, that his heart's desires could be fulfilled, made a reality through some nameless force. And in this case, it came twofold.

The first had been the strange malady that had struck his school - and _only_ his school - which had incapacitated so many fellow students, all of them bullies. The adults were calling it the Higashi-ku Strain, since it was a sickness that was limited to their area - in fact a single building. The students, on the other hand, had dubbed it the Kagome virus, after the little kids' rhyming game. It fit well enough, only targeting kids, and only kids who liked to play the ogre.

Ryou would never admit it to anyone, but this was as perfect a solution to his problems at school as he could have asked for. His bullies were gone, perhaps forever, and he didn't even have to change schools in order to escape them. He could stay where he had started to become comfortable and perhaps make some friends at last.

From this came the second half of his wish fulfillment. Since nothing the doctors did seemed to help those who had already fallen to the Kagome virus, nor could they say what it was, how it was spread or how anyone was to protect themselves from it, the school had decided to enact drastic measures. Only two months into the semester, and their doors had closed again to thoroughly sanitize the whole building, in attempt to scrub out whatever contagion was harming their students.

While normally a school-wide interruption like this would lead to students being shuffled to other schools temporarily to keep them from falling behind in their studies, Ryou's school was recommending their students take the time as an unplanned vacation. While some parents vehemently protested this kind of academic disruption, the school board was firm, explaining that while they still didn't understand how the disease was spread they couldn't risk sending possibly contaminated children to infect completely new schools. The practical upshot was that they got to have a nearly homework-free vacation before they were tired of the curriculum.

Normally whenever Ryou had time off he spent it on his own. He finished his homework early, and then distracted himself with games, puzzles and projects. Occasionally his mother allowed him to attend local game tournaments as a spectator - he would need much more practice against an opponent other than himself if he wanted to participate. When his father happened to be in the country he would take his son to his museum to see the exhibits, and not just those that the public saw. Ryou got to see the behind-the-scenes stuff, where the actual _work_ of the exhibits went on, and got to see things that would never make it to a display case, but which were still fascinating.

Or so his father always insisted. Ryou had once thought so as well. Now he was more inclined to think that his father brought him to the museum as an excuse to keep working while spending the day with his son.

This time found Ryou in a completely new kind of situation. He had people - _friends_ - who would come to his apartment and play games with him.

It was strange. A few weeks before the school closed its doors to undertake its sanitation regimen, one of Ryou's classmates had approached him, friendly and a little shy, looking for someone to play with. Ryou was so used to being a target, and to being shunned by others as a result of it - who in their right mind would hang out with the kid who was pummeled on a regular basis? - that at first he hadn't understood. He had wondered if it was some kind of prank, then when he had realized that she was being completely sincere he had worried and looked around to see if anyone had seen the girl speak to him. A girl daring to talk to him would only bring trouble down on them both. He'd forgotten for an instant that the bullies were all gone, all lain out in the hospital and far from being a danger.

He could make friends.

Ryou had gained a few friends, actually. Four in all, all of whom shared his interests and passions to varying degrees, and with whom he could more or less be himself.

It was wonderful. No bullies, friends at last, and now a vacation to spend whole days with them, playing the games he had played alone for so long.

His friends were over now, ant they were all playing a tabletop RPG. It was one designed to have a particular board, but Ryou didn't have that part. He'd never needed it before and his mother wouldn't buy it for him if he would never have occasion to use it. It was fine, though. They were making do without the board by using things found in Ryou's room as stand-ins for terrain and obstacles. They had the rule book, which had maps and layouts of what the miniature world was meant to look like, so it worked out quite well.

"My mom says they _still_ don't know what it is," said one of the girls. Her name was Natsuko and she was a year older than the rest of them, but was still new to these kinds of games. She got interested because she liked to watch a lot of fantasy anime. "_She_ thinks that it isn't a virus at all, and that's why they can't figure it out."

One of the boys, Manabu, picked up the dice and rolled for his turn. "What does your mom think it is, then?" He moved his figure around the makeshift board, mounting a set of stair-stepped textbooks.

Natsuko shrugged, showing that she didn't think it was important what her mother thought. "That it's a punishment for being bad."

Ryou looked up from his notes, frowning. "What, like God did it?"

She shrugged again, looking uncomfortable. "Yeah, I guess."

Manabu shook his head. "Yeah, but your mom thinks _everything_ is because God did it. Everyone else says the devil did it, or the devil made them do it, your mom says it was God, every time." He grinned at Natsuko, teasing. He knew that she was sensitive about what people thought of her mother and was deliberately pushing her buttons. Ryou had learned those buttons quickly by observation and was careful not to push them himself.

It never stopped Manabu, though. Natsuko flared up right away, cheeks flushing bright red. "Shut up, she does not!"

"Wait," Rie, the second girl of the group said. She was a girl with freckles and glasses who was experienced with games, but only video games. Natsuko stopped, looked at her. "Your mom thinks the Kagome virus is a punishment? Does that mean she knows all the kids who got it were bullies?"

Hitoshi perked up in his corner. "Ooh, that's true," he said, waving his figurine around in the air. Ryou winced at the sight of a figure being handled so carelessly, but it wasn't his, so he couldn't really make him stop… "No one else knows that, no grownups, anyway," he went on, figure outlining patterns in the air with every move of his hands. "So how does Natsuko's mom know that?"

"Yeah, adults are usually dumb about that kind of thing," Rie said matter-of-factly. "They think their kids are little angels no matter what. It's not until it's one of _their_ kids is picked on that they think someone else… oh."

The bespectacled girl trailed off, noticing Natsuko's expression. She had gone very quiet and was studying the playing board very carefully.

An awkward silence fell over them all, effectively halting the game as everyone tried to think of some way to smooth over the blunder Rie had stumbled straight into. Finally, shifting like she had sat on something uncomfortable, Rie said softly, "Sorry."

Natsuko shrugged like it didn't matter, but Ryou could see her face, could tell that it really _did_ matter. He knew how she felt. Hitoshi, if he saw, either wasn't very good at reading expressions or just didn't care.

"It's no big deal," he said breezily. "I think _everyone_ was bullied by those jerks. That's why you don't see anyone at school getting all sad that they're gone."

Natsuko didn't respond, but the rest of them nodded. The bullies, their experiences with them, and the mysterious virus were never very far from their minds. Even more than shared passions and hobbies, the surest way to camaraderie was in the sharing and comparing of battle scars. Figuratively speaking.

"It _is_ really strange, though, isn't it?" Manabu asked after a minute, sounding hesitant. "I mean, it was _only_ the bullies who got sick, and it was _all_ of the bullies. Isn't that weird?"

Hitoshi rolled his eyes, snatching the dice out of Manabu's hand. "_Duh_, that's why everyone is so freaked out, genius. No one can figure it out. _I_ hope when they do figure it out they spread it to every school in Japan, no, the _world_, and then there will be no more bullies at all."

Natsuko smiled. "That would be cool."

Rie looked a little scandalized, but Manabu interrupted her before she could say anything. "No, I mean it's really _weird_. Viruses don't pick people because they're mean. Viruses don't care what kind of person you are."

"So what?" Rie asked.

"I don't think it's really a virus."

This announcement was met with a thoughtful pause as four heads tried to wrap around it.

"What else would it be, then?" Hitoshi asked, confused.

Manabu shrugged. "I don't know. But I don't think it's a virus, it makes no sense." He paused, biting his lip. "Maybe Natsuko's mom is right and it's a punishment?"

"Like God or something?" Hitoshi was laughing again. "Like how Natsuko's mom says? That's so dumb!"

Natsuko scowled at him and kicked him in the foot, nearly taking out the mountain made out of textbooks in the process. Hitoshi squeaked and stopped laughing quite so hard.

"Noooo…" Manabu said, glaring at Hitoshi, "I mean what if it's a _person_ doing all of this? That would make a little more sense, right? That someone was going around who didn't like mean kids and doing something to them?"

Rie shivered. "Makes sense, but that's scary, someone going around and hurting kids he doesn't like. Not even going _around_, but hanging around our school."

They all thought about that, Ryou included. He had contributed very little to the conversation thus far - he rarely did. He liked to listen and observe, a habit learned over years of having no alternative. He considered the idea of there being someone at their school, some teacher or janitor or cook, some adult who decided they just didn't like mean kids. It made him shudder as well, that there could be someone at his school, someone he had probably seen who would put a bunch of kids into comas. It was scary…

He wanted to personally thank whoever had done it.

He put down his book, a sign that he was joining the conversation. "If it's a person instead of a virus, then it's probably someone we know, who works there. And if it _is_ someone, then we have to figure out _how_ they're doing it."

Rie's face lit up. "Like a mystery simulator!" she said. "Or a detective show!"

The others brightened up as well, the somber mood of a few moments ago lifting at the suggestion of playing at detective in their very own mystery. "Wouldn't it be cool if _we_ solved it when all of the grownups and all of the doctors couldn't do it?" Hitoshi said, though they were all certainly thinking the same thing.

It _would_ be cool. To show up the all-powerful adults on something so important would probably be one of the coolest things any of them could imagine, a bit like being the superhero who saves the day. A hero in real life, that would be even more of a wish come true than Ryou would have dared imagine.

With daydreams of cheers and praise raining down on them, the five kids set aside their tabletop RPG to bend their minds around this new possibility in the riddle of the Kagome virus. Ryou didn't mind abandoning the game in the middle. So long as his friends were there, so long as he _had_ friends, then he was content whatever they were doing.

Still marveling a little at how his fortunes had changed, at how much brighter every day was with friends to share them with, Ryou allowed himself another daring, selfish wish. He wished to himself that days like this would never end, so he might always enjoy them. He wished that these friends wouldn't leave him as he feared they eventually would. He wished that they would stay forever.

Beneath the cotton of his shirt, the golden ring clinked.

…

If having friends who would share his games with him and having all of his school life tormentors taken out of the picture was like having all of his wishes fulfilled, then _this_ was a nightmare.

School was back in session, all of the classes resumed, and herds of students were trooping though halls that reeked of antiseptic and floor wax. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer dispensers had been mounted to walls inside and outside every door. Face masks, which many had already been wearing before the school had closed, were available at the front door and mandatory. Every teacher, every student, the janitors, the nurses, the people who worked in the offices, everyone sported a white mask across nose and mouth. Some had drawn silly faces on the outside of them and walked around with permanent grins, snarls or kissy faces. It was hard to understand what the teachers were saying, and the whole thing made it seem like they were in a giant Yanki gang. Or a hospital. Neither was a particularly comfortable thought.

"_Ryou, wake up! Wake up, __**please**__, you have to wake__up!"_

It would have been indescribably ridiculous to try and go on as normal, one class after another, to pretend that there was nothing at all wrong when quite obviously there _was_. All he had to do was look at his neighbor, or down the hall, or across the room. The sea of surgical masks would be enough to convince anyone.

But even without the masks, Ryou doubted that anyone would have been able to keep up the charade. Even with the school closed and having every wall and desk scrubbed to within an inch of its life, more kids had fallen into comas. While away from the halls and in their homes, with no bullies left, there were more students filling beds at the hospital. Four more, in fact - two boys and two girls. And it had nearly been five.

"_**Ryou!"**_

Ryou walked into his homeroom and was faced a wall of eyes and surgical masks all turning towards him. With half of everyone's faces obscured it was difficult to read expressions, but none of them seemed overly friendly. They seemed frightened, mistrustful… angry.

As he walked to his desk his classmates parted around him like the Red Sea. No one spoke to him, nor would anyone look directly at him. It was all sidelong and furtive glances, eyes sliding away from him as soon as he would return a look. Of this kind, Ryou was the recipient of many, many stares. He sat down at his desk, and when class began and everyone was meant to be at their seats, his neighbors were sitting as far from him as possible without physically moving their desks.

It was then that Ryou understood, or thought he understood, why coming back to school was a very bad idea for him.

They had never really gotten anywhere in their deductions, he, Manabu, Natsuko, Hitoshi and Rie. They had written down a list of 'suspects' and done their best to determine who would be the most likely to do this to the students based on motive, opportunity and their incomplete ideas of their personalities. How much did they know about the janitors anyway, or the lunch ladies, or even the principle? Who was to say that _any_ of them couldn't go insane and start attacking the students, taking out bullies one after another? As for how kids were being put into comas so that even doctors couldn't figure out how it was done, that left all five of them stumped. In the end, though they all still dreamed of being heralded as deductive geniuses, they had set it aside, though Hitoshi would sometimes voice a new theory.

Instead of solving real life mysteries, which were much harder than the detective shows made it look, they had turned back to their tabletop adventures. Tabletop RPGs never frustrated them with dead ends, while still giving their imaginations room to stretch.

Ryou discovered that after all the solitary practice he had gotten in designing campaigns without ever actually playing through them, he enjoyed taking on the role of Game Master. The title was cool and he got to be both friend and antagonist to every player. It was better than he had ever imagined, having people to play his games with. The banter, the laughter, the way Natsuko and Hitoshi would tease each other. It was the best time Ryou had ever had.

…

"_Ryou, wake up, wake up, __**please!**__"_

_His mother was shaking him by the shoulders, screaming at him to wake up over and over again. Ryou scrunched up his face and shook his head, seeking his pillows. He didn't want to wake up yet. There was no school today, so there was no need, and he was so __**tired**__…_

"_**Ryou!**__" Another hard shake that rattled his teeth._

_Ryou groaned, rolling his head around until he thought he was facing his mother. He hadn't realized at the time that she was holding him up in a sitting position. "Mmmph… mother, I-"_

_The rest of what he had been about to say was cut off as his mother enveloped him in a crushing hug, nearly smoothing him. He tried pushing her away, but his arms were like noodles. When Noriko finally loosened her embrace, he noticed that he wasn't in bed like he had thought. He was on the floor of his room, sitting at the little table he brought in whenever his friends came over to play games. He looked around, confused, and it dawned on him just how drained and weak he felt. Even the alarm rising in him wasn't enough to snap him out of it, he just had no __**energy**__._

"_Ryou, Ryou, I was so scared you wouldn't wake up, none of the others have, I don't know what I would do, what I would tell your father…"_

_Ryou shook his head, trying to clear it. It felt like a heavy helium balloon, if such things could exist. His mother continued to babble, making no sense in her ramblings, though he still tried to keep up with her, a lost swimmer in a tossing ocean. _

_Eventually his heavy eyes fell on the first of the bodies. Something - a scrap of dream - flashed in his mind and was gone. In his leaden tiredness, Ryou still went terribly cold at the sight. _

"_Mother, what happened? What's happened to them?" _

_It took several repetitions to get Noriko to actually hear him, and then still some more time to understand the reply she gave. After Ryou's friends had come over and sequestered themselves in Ryou's room as per usual, Noriko had let them be for several hours. It had taken that long for her to realize that no one had come out for snacks or to use the restroom, or that there was any sound coming from the room. When she walked in, all five children were passed out on the floor, still around their game table, the game in mid-progress._

…

Ryou's friends had fallen to the same virus that before had taken only bullies, and it had nearly taken Ryou as well.

All five of them were rushed to the hospital. The parents of the other four children were called in. The four were tested, and it was found that they were the same as all the other students they had gotten so far: physically fine, no wounds or visible trauma, no sign of infections or disorders, they looked as though they could open their eyes at any time. Despite appearances, nothing woke them up. They were unresponsive to any and all stimuli, and remained in their comatose states without so much as twitching.

As for Ryou, the doctors took an especial interest in him. Of all the cases they had gotten, he was the only one who had fought off whatever this disease was. They put him through a barrage of tests, drew phial after phial of blood, and asked him questions ranging from what he'd had for dinner the night before to what he remembered of the last hour before falling unconscious.

He couldn't remember anything important. He could remember his friends arriving and setting out the board they needed for their game, but after that… nothing. Which didn't seem right. The five of them had been in the _middle_ of a game when they had all collapsed; he should remember the beginning of the game, his friends chatting… but no. There was nothing. The very last thing he remembered before his mother shaking him back into the world of the living was handing out the little figures that each of them had chosen as their favorites.

The doctors ran their tests on him, hoping that as the single known case of someone who had contracted and somehow trumped the virus, he might provide invaluable information. Ryou held still for them all and tried to remember what had happened in those few hours that were all blank to him. He tried to understand, to come to grips with the idea of his friends suddenly all being gone. Just like that, after years of yearning for them, to having them for a few bare weeks before they were taken away again.

It wasn't fair.

Three days after the hospital admitted him, they released him again. They could find nothing wrong save the few things he had complained of himself; extreme exhaustion, weakness and short term amnesia. They found one or two things in his blood work to explain the first two symptoms - he was low on some chemicals with long names that he couldn't remember. The knowledge failed to lead to any better understanding of what was going on or give them any clue on how to help those who hadn't fought off unconsciousness. They couldn't explain _why_ Ryou felt the way he did or why he had been able to wake up. What they _were_ able to say was that Ryou had no sign of infection of any kind, and that once he felt better and the school reopened, he could start attending as normal.

And so here he was, mask over his face and as normal as everyone else.

He hadn't been sure that coming back to school would be a good idea. He didn't _want_ to come back, to be surrounded by classmates, all chattering together between classes and passing notes during. It would be a constant reminder of friendships that he was not a part of. Even more of a reminder, though, were the two empty seats in his classroom, Natsuko and Hitoshi's desks. Manabu was in a different homeroom and Rie was one grade ahead of the rest of them, but their desks would also be empty - scrubbed clean of any contagion and of the students that had once sat at them.

None of them had been safe from whatever was sweeping through the school.

But if he hadn't seen why going back to school could be a good thing - his mother insisted that it _would_ be good for him, that he couldn't hide from what frightened him - neither had he seen all of the reasons of why it was a bad thing. In all his imaginings of this day he hadn't seen all of the hostile looks being sent over the ubiquitous surgical masks.

Rumors had already spread about how the latest four had gone into comas. Ryou wasn't surprised. Anything at all to do with the Kagome virus would spread like wildfire among those who attended his school. But the dark glances he was getting and the unspoken but apparently unanimous agreement to avoid him as much as possible told him that they all knew that those four classmates had been at _his_ apartment when they collapsed. They knew that he had somehow escaped the same fate that was leaving no one else standing, and they were angry.

It wasn't fair.

The day went on uncomfortably, the teachers doing their level best to behave as though nothing was wrong and that their lessons were all that was on everyone's mind. The students were also pretending - pretending to pay attention, to care, to be learning anything at all beside how to put on a false face while their minds were miles away. Ryou was doubly uncomfortable, trying to do as everyone else was while being keenly aware that no one was glad to have him there. Even the teachers seemed less than pleased to have him in his seat today.

He didn't think it could get much worse, and was looking forward to the closing bell, when during art period their teacher required them to break up into three-person teams.

It was then that Ryou realized why it _really_ was that everyone was looking at him with such hostility.

"No way, not here!" Toshi, a dark complexioned boy said when Ryou tried to join him and one other to make three. Groups had formed quickly, and after wandering the entire perimeter of the room, Ryou had found only one group still in need of a person. There was nowhere else for him to go, and now…

"Go find somewhere else!"

Ryou looked between Toshi and another boy, a child whose name he didn't remember and who was watching his partner worriedly. Ryou looked behind him, wondering if he had missed some other group with only two he could fit into. Determining that no, there was not, he turned back and made himself sound as apologetic as possible. "I'm sorry, but everyone else already has three. This is the only-"

"Well too bad," Toshi snapped, pushing his chin forward, trying to look down his nose at Ryou. He had drawn a kitty mouth and whiskers on his mask; it didn't suit the rest of his face. "We don't want you, so you'll have to find somewhere else."

"But there _is_ nowhere else," Ryou protested.

"Then make a group by yourself!"

The dispute had already caught the attention of those who were close by, but Toshi's belligerent shout had made everyone in the room aware of their argument, including the teacher. He strode over to them, wading through the intervening sea of children, brows drawn low over his eyes and nose. Toshi refused to look away from Ryou to watch him approach, he was too focused on his glaring.

"Boys," he said, his words muffled by the mask. "What's the problem here?"

Ryou was at a bit of a loss to explain what was happening, why Toshi was being so unreasonable, or why the other boy was standing so silent behind him. Toshi, however, had no such trouble with working his tongue.

"_He_ wants to be a part of our group!" He pointed at Ryou, who flinched away from it. When Toshi said 'he,' it was said with such venom that it really did feel like an attack.

The teacher's brows drew even lower. He looked from Toshi to Ryou and back again. "Yes?" His tone was just as confused as his partially visible expression suggested. "And why is that a problem? There are only two of you so far, Ryou can be your third."

Now Toshi did look up at the teacher, with such a scowl on his half face that was rare to see a student level on a teacher. "He _can't_ be a part of our group, _sensei_," he said, as though stating the blindingly obvious.

The teacher was becoming impatient, and almost snapped, "Why not?"

The scowl was transferred to Ryou, its intensity clashing with the cuteness of the drawn mask. "He's _infected_."

The words weren't shouted, but they could not have had a greater impact on the room if they had been. Everyone froze, the few whispered conversations around the edges of the classroom cut off abruptly. It seemed as though every pair of eyes were fixed on the little drama unfolding in their corner, and more specifically on Ryou. All fixed on him, all echoing the look on Toshi's face: angry, distrustful, hostile.

Surrounded on all sides by such open aggression, all directed at him, Ryou felt a stab of fear.

"Infected?" The teacher repeated the word, as though he were unfamiliar with it. "What do you mean he's infected? You aren't sick, are you, Ryou?"

Ryou shook his head quickly, not trusting himself to speak and sure that nothing he could say would clear the rising tension. He had a pretty good idea what Toshi meant when he said 'infected' and it had nothing to do with catching a cold.

His suspicion was confirmed when Toshi practically shrieked, "He has the Kagome virus!"

The teacher went even blanker than before. He blinked. "Kagome virus?"

Toshi nodded emphatically, a motion that was mirrored all around as students came closer to see what was going on. The fear rose in Ryou a little higher. School had never been the safe haven it was meant to be for him, what with the number of 'fights' he got into and the innumerable petty intimidations, but the classroom itself had always been a safe place. Under the watchful eye of an adult and surrounded by witnesses, it was impossible for anyone to really mess with him and not get themselves into trouble as well.

Now even the classroom was filling with this sense of danger, of impending disaster. Looking around now, Ryou no longer felt protected by his fellows, but threatened by them. He was surrounded, boxed in, with nowhere to get away to.

Anger began to rise along with the fear, swelling up around his heart. How could they keep him out of things, just because he _might_ have the virus or whatever it was? He was awake, walking around, that should be proof enough that he was fine. How _dare_ they exclude him.

Ryou's face and the back of his neck felt too hot.

"Everyone knows that Rie, Hitoshi, Manabu and Natsuko were all at his house when they fell asleep. Bakura fell asleep too, but woke up again. That proves he's got it!"

More nods of agreement around the room. Ryou felt a little dizzy with the motion in his periphery. He shook his head again and, on finding his voice, pushed down the fear and anger to reply. "No, I don't. The doctors tested me, they said I didn't have it at all and I should be fine. No one will catch it from me. I don't have the virus!"

Toshi's brow furrowed, but it was someone else who spoke now, a lilting voice from a small girl standing behind Ryou. "But the doctors can't find the virus in anyone, even the kids who are asleep, so…"

"So how do we know for sure that you don't have it?" Another girl picked up when the first trailed away. "Maybe you have it, just like them and they can't find it in you, just like them."

"But I'm awake!"

"So?" Toshi picked up again. "Maybe you got lucky, doesn't mean the virus is gone. People who get sick can make other people sick even when they look fine." He glanced back at his partner, seeking even more support than the room was providing him with. "We don't want to catch the Kagome virus!"

"But-"

"Alright," the teacher cut in sharply. Several students jumped, forgetting that there was a teacher in the room with them. "That is quite enough of that. Everyone, I can assure you that Bakura is not infected. He will not give anyone the 'Kagome virus' or whatever it is that has been causing so many of our friends to fall ill. His doctors called the school before we reopened to assure us that he poses no danger to anyone. Ryou Bakura _will not make anyone sick_." He looked around the classroom, making eye contact and driving the point home to each of them.

When he was sure that everyone had heard him and understood, he nodded sharply. "Good," he said. "Bakura, you team up with Toshi and Nao. We'll begin our project in five minutes, so I want _everyone_," he looked around the room, "to be at their stations and ready by then."

The teacher went to stand at the front of the class again, watching all and ensuring that his instructions were followed. After a few moments hesitation his students went to work gathering what they would need from cabinets, cupboards and sinks. The classroom quickly became busy, though still a little too quiet for a class of twenty-odd children.

The only ones who were not so quick to jump were Ryou's group. They stood frozen for considerably longer, locked into a standoff, Toshi and Ryou being the main perpetrators, with Nao looking nervously back and forth between the two. Finally Toshi turned away to a cupboard to find the paper mache for their project station. An instant later and Nao followed suit, unwilling to stay so near Ryou without his friend.

Ryou turned away as well, relieved, and forced himself to take a long breath. He tried, without much success, to clear his mind of what had just happened and the emotions that it had brought to the surface. The fear he couldn't completely dispel, instead it settled into anxiety that gnawed quietly at the back of his mind. That was fine. Until very recently, that was how every day had been at school, and it was remarkably easy to slip back into it again.

Less easily gotten rid of was the anger. That still coiled around inside of him, unspent and sullen, looking for some escape, some sort of expression. It was like the day when he had lashed out at Taro, only instead of coming upon him suddenly and blindsiding him, he was aware of this anger and difficult as it was, he could rein it back. He was still in control of himself. It was more difficult than before the day with Taro, when controlling his anger was a matter of repression and extending his tightly held control out to whatever he could touch, but he could do it. The urge to lash out at Toshi and all of the others who stared at him was contained, and all would be well.

He went to the sink to pick up and fill one of many small buckets with water, being careful not to splash himself, and making a small game of not allowing any of the water touch the outside of the bucket. He didn't hear Toshi come up behind him over the sound of the faucet running, nor did he sense anyone behind him in time to do more than glance over his shoulder as a bag of dry paper mache mix was thrown in his face.

…

The parent-teacher conference that was called after the incident at school was long and exhausting for everyone involved.

No one could say that Ryou had _started_ the fight, but his case was not helped at all by how willingly he had joined in after the first attack. To onlookers it seemed as though Ryou, shy and unassuming in every teacher's estimation, had become something of a demon after Toshi threw the paper mache. After that first blow, Ryou had taken the bucket of water he had been filling in the sink and tossed it at Toshi, container and all. That alone would have been enough to warrant disciplinary action for both boys, but from there it had only escalated.

Ryou had followed the thrown bucket of water with his body, intending to either strike or kick the retreating Toshi, and tripped over a chair. He got back up again quickly, but the extra few seconds had given the class enough time to process what had happened, and given Toshi time to regain his feet. When both boys were upright, they had gone at each other, one soaked to the skin, the other whitened with dust and clumps of paper stuck in his hair. They only traded a couple of blows before the most eager of their classmates joined the fray, throwing juvenile sized punches, pulling hair, some even taking the measure of tossing _their_ water into the free-for-all.

Their teacher had been hopelessly outnumbered and completely unable to calm the pandemonium that had become of his normally well-behaved class. It had taken a shout into the hall to bring more adults to act as referees and pull everyone apart, keep them apart and in some cases sequester students away from the others to keep the fighting from starting up again.

Ryou had been one of those. Out of everyone in his class, Ryou had come away with the most injuries, including a bruised and swollen cheek, a split lip, and a twisted ankle. He was also given the most credit for inflicting damage on his fellows. If the rest of the class were to be believed, then _every_ bruise on _every_ other child had come from him, though the adults were more inclined to believe that at least half of it came from clumsiness or 'friendly fire.' Since Ryou had been everyone's primary target, it wasn't surprising that they would attribute their injuries to the common enemy among them. And as for Ryou himself, even with the addition of four more teachers to break apart the fighting, he had been unwilling to stop. Even with his homeroom teacher physically holding him back he had still been straining towards the classmate that had most recently attacked him by twisting at a handful of his hair.

Upon hearing of what had become of their children during their first day back, and what they in turn had been responsible for, most parents were outraged, some had been incredulous, and all had been surprised, perhaps none more than Noriko Bakura.

Of those gathered, she was the only one with sympathy for Ryou, let alone taking any sort of stand in his defense. It seemed impossible that her son would be capable of so much violence, even if he were provoked. He got into fights, she avowed, but they were rare, the kind of thing any school age boy might get into, not full scale brawls against his entire class. It was unthinkable, impossible.

Those of the school faculty who knew Ryou Bakura as anything more than a name on the class roster and a shock of white hair were inclined to agree with her. Ryou was not one to start fights, and this level of antagonism was as unprecedented as it was impossible to predict. It was generally agreed that while it was no excuse, the boy certainly never would have behaved as he did, had not Toshi provoked him.

Other parents were less inclined to be so understanding. They heard that Ryou had not acted first, had _re_acted to violence towards himself, but the boy had done so with unwarranted vehemence, causing injuries to their own children. They felt that if Ryou were not so naturally violent, if his parents had done a better job with him, or if the teachers had been more firm in controlling his class and those within it, then none of this would have happened. Their own children were not to blame, obviously, they had been victims all.

The school was ready to dole out minor disciplinary action for all the students, including heavier homework assignments and eliminating recesses for a time, save for the two who had started the brawl. For Ryou and Toshi, the school was disposed to be more stringent, beginning with detention over the weekend for several weeks and including more schoolwork and completely truncating rest periods. Most of the parents, while protesting a little the punishments of their own children, were in agreement with those of the two catalytic troublemakers. Not all was fair, but at least those most responsible who _could_ be punished would be.

All save one pair of parents agreed. Toshi's mother and father, as well as protesting the punishment of their son, howled at what they perceived as light handling of the boy Ryou. In his fury Ryou had managed to break their son's nose, strained a muscle in his shoulder when he attempted to bear him to the ground, and one other semi-major injury that made it painful for the boy to walk properly. Toshi's parents were righteously angry, threatening to sue Noriko and her husband, sue the school, and to take the whole story to the media if that was what it took to receive some sort of restitution.

Once all of the parents save those of Toshi and Ryou were excused, the faculty did their best to placate the irate mother and father. They would not be soothed, however, and the best that could be negotiated was that they would pursue no legal action if Ryou Bakura were immediately expelled from the school to keep him away from their son and any other child that he had hurt.

Noriko protested on behalf of her son, whom she felt was being unfairly prosecuted, attacked again for the very act of defending himself. She argued and pleaded with Toshi's parents, fighting for Ryou's right to stay where he had finally grown comfortable and when he had _not_ been completely to blame for what had taken place. Toshi's parents were unmoved, and would not compromise more than they had already done.

The school, while agreeing with Noriko's points, was not insensible to their own position in the matter. In the public eye they were already under scrutiny with the unexplained epidemic that had run rampant through their halls. Public funding was on a decline in an economy that was already proving difficult to weather. To have a large lawsuit to battle on top of all that, the publicity that would result from it, or just the publicity that the parents threatened to level themselves would be enough to cripple the school if not sink it entirely, taking a few careers with it. With these things weighing heavily in their consideration, they were not so motivated to side with Noriko, but instead advised her to consider the option.

When she turned on them and their attempt at mollifying her in betrayed disgust, they made an offer, as close to a compromise as they were able to give. Rather than expulsion, they would transfer Ryou Bakura to another school. This incident would still be on his record, they assured Toshi's parents, but an expulsion would not be, and it would save the Bakura family a great deal of time and effort in finding and re-enrolling Ryou in the middle of the year.

Toshi's parents were displeased, but more inclined to agree when reminded of their own son's unprovoked attack on a classmate and what kind of mark that could leave on _his_ record, what it might mean for _his_ future prospects for colleges and universities. Noriko considered the situation, the sets of angry eyes glaring at her from across the table, the seated men and women of the school board who were all so hopeful for a peaceful resolution that wouldn't cost them everything and so uselessly apologetic for what it would cost her family. She considered all of these things and wished her husband were home to help her make this decision. She had phoned him as soon as the school had called her and appraised him of the situation, but all she had received in return for her half-panicked international call was vague reassurance that she would be fine, that everything would be fine, and whatever came out of the meeting they could work through. He would support her in whatever she decided, and they would handle whatever came together. Later. When he had more time.

Noriko considered all of this, considered her reclusive, troubled son and how another transfer would affect him. She also considered what remaining in this school, and having to see these same children day after day might do. All of which might be moot if Toshi's parents made good on their threat and sued the school into oblivion. She considered the coma sickness that was still spreading through the school, that it had already touched Ryou once and how close to death he looked, and how very much like being dead those children who had been asleep for weeks already were.

She considered it all, and under the pressures coming at her from all sides, Noriko bowed her head.

…

Snow covered the ground in a thick, white blanket that muffled all sound and turned the world pure and sparkling in the afternoon light. It was very fresh snow, which was the only reason why it was still so perfectly white along a street. Even now it showed the first signs of contamination - a set of footprints, a winding, serpentine track left by an intrepid bicyclist. This was city snow, its beauty made all the more precious in its brevity.

Ryou looked at it all and could feel nothing but resentment. Resentment for the cold, for being made to stand out in said cold with nothing to do but be blinded by the whiteness, resentment for the set of circumstances that made him available to stand out in the snow.

It had been about two weeks since he had been 'transferred' to his new school, and he had yet to set foot in the place. A combination of paperwork and the nearness of Christmas break made it so that Ryou _wouldn't_ be seeing his new school until a few days after Christmas. Until then he was at a loose end, his brain atrophying while his bruises healed. His lack of occupation - or any friends to otherwise fill up a portion of his days - was more of an irritation than he would have thought. There was nothing to do but watch TV and attempt to distract himself with his games. Television became dull and repetitive quickly. His own projects, once he had the experience of sharing them with others, felt empty now he was left alone to them again. He had almost thrown away the game board, books and pieces that he and his few friends had been using on the day they had fallen ill, but he just couldn't quite bring himself to. Instead he had packed it all away neatly in a box, then tucked the box into a far corner of his closet. He even included the four little figurines that his friends had been using as their avatars. They didn't belong to him, but staring down at them as they lay cradled in his hand, he couldn't part with them. He doubted that their parents would appreciate seeing him if he went around to return them, so he tucked the figures into the box along with everything else and did his best to forget all about all of it.

Remembering them now, and why he had been so unwilling to return them to the families of those they belonged to, made the resentment seethe in him even more.

He had been doing so well in keeping control of his anger, in making sure that the unexpected, frightening part of himself that had taken him over when Taro had pushed him too far wouldn't do so again. And then stupid Toshi had to ruin it all by tossing a bag of paper mache in his face. The surprise made his control slip, and the bucket was leaving his hands before he could even fully take stock of what had happened or why.

He had wanted to hurt Toshi and every other kid who came at him. The first few blows signaled to all that there was a free-for-all to be had, and anyone had carte blanche to take a swing. He had wanted it, had joined in more than willingly. A small portion of his mind watched in horror as he landed punches and kicks with far too much precision, and then as he had struggled against the adults, trying to inflict more pain before he was dragged away.

Ryou had been trying to reign himself in as well, with much less success.

His punishment for fighting was not to stand in the hall, not detention, but expulsion. Except that they weren't calling it an expulsion. It was a transfer, 'to find an academic setting more suitable to your personality.'

_Which one?_ was Ryou's cynical thought.

His mother had explained that this was the most amicable, the most rational option available to them, and they ought to be glad that they could walk away from it all with so very little fuss. Ryou had only looked at her smiling, worried face without saying a word, and wondered how hard she had tried to keep him from being expelled before giving in.

So now, since he was at such loose ends, he had been delegated as Amane's chaperone on her walk back from school. She could just as easily take the bus home as she did going to school, but Noriko had decided that Ryou needed more fresh air while he was out of school, and that Amane would like to have her big brother walk her home like a gentleman. The fact that the two of them had to walk the distance through several inches of snow didn't seem to register with their mother, nor did the fact that Ryou was left standing in the cold, sneakers buried in miniature drifts until Amane was let out.

He could have gone inside to wait. He doubted anyone would mind a boy who was waiting for his sister choosing to do so where it was warm, but he suspected they would have an issue with _Ryou_ coming into their halls. He knew that he would rather not go inside if it could be avoided.

Amane attended the same school Ryou had been so recently expelled from, and he doubted that anyone other than his sister would be happy to see him. And he didn't want to risk being seen by a classmate, or what sort of scene might develop after that.

Ryou sighed, a stream of white breath rising up to the sky and lost. Rather than retreat to where it was warm, he stayed outside, out of sight from anyone within. He wouldn't have to worry about any ex-classmates seeing him on leaving, at least. Amane's class let out an hour earlier than any he had once attended. He would be safe from that, but he was still nervous that someone would see him from the windows.

By the time Amane's class was over and the tide of younger children was let loose on the world, Ryou's toes were numb, along with his nose and cheeks, and he was sure that he could feel his old class somehow managing to stare at his back. Amane took a little more time than the first rush, making his wait even longer. When she finally did come out and spot him, she grabbed him around the waist in her usual greeting, the hug coming a little more heavily than normal with the addition of the pink and yellow backpack she wore.

"Nii-chan!" she squeaked, squeezing him tight. Even through his thick coat, it took Ryou's breath away a little. She was so strong, it was no wonder she was already showing an interest in sports.

"Hello, Amane," he said, much more dully than was his norm. He was cold, and he was tired in ways that had nothing at all to do with sleep. He just wanted to go home, get warm and escape into something, be it a book or an RPG design. "Have you got all of your things?"

Amane nodded, disengaging herself from him. She wiggled her backpack a little by way of demonstration. "Uh-huh, all in here, safe and sound. Can we stop by the candy store on the way home?"

The candy store was a block out of their way. The trip from school to home wasn't long, but it was made much longer than it seemed when slogging through snow. Adding an extra block for candy, and then the same block again in recovering their steps to return to their original route… "No, Amane. Not today."

"Why not?"

"Because it's too cold, it's too far, mom probably doesn't want you to have candy right before dinner, and I don't have any money."

"_I_ have money," Amane said, seizing on the one objection that was any real obstruction between her and the sweet of her choice. "I have ¥500 pocket money that mom said I could spend on anything I want." She smiled up at him. "And I want candy."

Ryou frowned. He should just give in, go the extra figurative mile and let her get her sweets. He wanted to, he wanted her to be happy and keep smiling. But that want was weighed against his more selfish wants of warmth and rest and solitude, his own disinclination towards more exercise, especially on someone else's behalf, and it was swiftly losing that battle. "I said no and I meant it. It's too cold and I've already been waiting fifteen minutes for you. I'll get frostbite and you'll catch a cold if we stay out here too long, so we're going straight home." He felt guilty even as he said it, and even more put out and resentful at that stab of guilt. He grabbed her hand in its mitten and tugged her along after him. She whined but didn't try to pull her hand free, and though she pouted she didn't ask anymore about the candy store.

They made their way down the sidewalks covered in snow, what had so recently been pristine already churned to a mess from the stampede of children that preceded them. Ryou and Amane walked in pouting silence, hand in hand through the wreckage of those before them, no longer able to see the beauty of winter through the muddy prints of sneakers.

"What took you so long coming out?" Ryou asked at last, when his sister failed to begin jabbering at him. "Everyone else is long gone already and you're usually one of the first ones out the door."

For a minute she didn't reply, and he thought she was sulking too deeply to answer him, but eventually she lifted her head a little and answered, "I had to stay behind to talk to the teacher."

Ryou's gut did an unpleasant flip. Amane was never in trouble, her being asked to stay behind was unheard of. "What happened?"

"She talked to me."

"What about?"

"About getting into fights at school."

The flip in Ryou's stomach twisted itself into a knot. Amane was getting into fights now, too? Or was somebody picking on her like they had him? It would hardly matter either way in the minds of the teachers, who all knew Ryou's new record, and knew that they were brother and sister. They would see that and draw their own conclusions about Amane's potential as a troublemaker. Unless, of course, they had actual evidence that Amane had started a fight…

"Did you get in a fight?"

The girl shook her head so that the fringes of her hair peeking out from her knit cap flew out to the sides. "No-o! I didn't get into a _fight_. There was just this one boy, he said a mean thing, so I…" She trailed off.

Ryou looked at his sister. Her head was bowed and she watched as her patterned winter boots made their way through the churned slush, not looking up at him. "What did you do, Amane?"

She shrugged, making the backpack bob up and down. She still refused to look up at him. "I yelled at him, and I pushed him. But it was only a little push," she added quickly, looking up at him with big eyes. "He didn't get hurt, so it wasn't a _fight_, right?"

He shook his head. "No, but it could have turned into one." He remembered all too clearly how quickly, how unexpectedly a fight had broken out in his own classroom. A fight that everyone seemed to think _he_ had started and blamed him for. How had it even started, and how had it escalated so much? No fight should have gotten so bad, especially not one started during class. It should have broken apart as soon as it had started, with no more than Toshi and Ryou involved in it.

Actually, it shouldn't have broken out at all. If Ryou had been more himself, all that _should_ have come out of that would have been himself covered in paper mache. Instead, he had fought back, the strange, temporary insanity that had taken over with Taro taking hold again, and then seeming to possess everyone in the room so they joined in the fray. It still baffled him, he knew it must baffle all of the teachers and faculty, and they loaded the blame on he who was found in the center of it all: Ryou. If they found Amane in the center of a similar situation, they might decide to take proactive measures to make sure that nothing like the incident in Ryou's class happened again.

So in addition to the fight in his own class, Ryou could be held responsible for anything that went wrong for Amane as well. He was the elder sibling, and obviously a bad role model. Ryou did his best to not grind his teeth.

"If that ever happens again," he said tightly, "then just walk away, all right? If someone says something bad, you ignore them or tell a teacher about it."

Amane pouted up at him. "That's what Ms. Shiraishi said. But the boy was saying bad stuff about _you_, nii-chan."

Ryou twitched a little in surprise. What would a class full of six year olds have to say about him? "It doesn't matter what they say, Amane. Just ignore them."

"Yes it does!" Amane's voice rose, she looked on the verge of angry tears. "He was talking about _you_, said that you had hurt his older brother in a fight, that you had tried to _kill_ him and you should be in _jail_ and I yelled at him, told him he was dumb and didn't know _my_ brother at all, that you would never try to hurt anyone like that, and he said _I_ was dumb and that you were a murderer and I just got so _angry_ I pushed him over-!"

"It doesn't matter!" Amane's face was red as a beet, which couldn't be healthy. "Whatever anyone says about me, it doesn't matter because it's not true, right? So they can say whatever they want, it doesn't hurt anything and you can just ignore them. They'll stop eventually."

Amane shook her head, not at all pacified. "No, it _does_ matter, Ryou, because you're nice and that boy was a liar! If he says those things then people will believe that you're bad. You're not bad!"

The girl had stopped on the sidewalk, forcing Ryou to stop as well. Her face was flushed and her dark eyes overly bright, shining with frustrated tears. Her whole little body shook, and Ryou didn't think it was from the cold. She stared up at him, one hand balled into a fist, the other squeezing his hand until it hurt. "You're not bad," she said, a smidgeon more quietly but not any less intensely. "They say you are, but you're not, and I won't let them say so!"

Ryou stared, surprised. Amane was so young that it was easy to forget she could hear what was going on around her as well as anyone else could. And even a child could draw conclusions from what she heard. He hadn't thought of her being more than nominally aware of what was taking place in Ryou's school life or what the common opinion of him might be. He certainly hadn't thought of what her feelings on the situation might be. He was seeing it now, and was taken aback to realize that he had someone in his life who was on _his_ side.

But she was still a child, and could get into trouble if she wasn't careful, all because of him. He sighed. "What they're saying might be truer than you think, Amane. It's not worth it to pick fights at school over this. Don't bother. Let them say what they want. I don't care."

The look she gave him was as betrayed an expression as he had ever seen on her face, and he felt a little sick to realize that he had hurt his sister.

Amane threw Ryou's hand away and stormed off towards home without him, stomping muffled, angry stomps through the dirty snow. Ryou watched her for a minute, wondering what he should do before trailing after her, deciding the best thing for now would be to give her space. He would make it up to her later, after she had some time to cool down and he had some time to think of something really good. Maybe a trip to that candy shop with his allowance added to hers as a present. Their mother would hate it, but Ryou was more concerned about his sister than his mother.

Ryou followed after Amane, feeling like a heel, resentment and frustration still bubbling quietly beneath everything else, while Amane continued her angry progress along the sidewalk, arms scything through the air with each step. She would either still be mad when they got home, or too tired to be anything, she was expending so much energy.

Amane came to the final crosswalk before their block well before Ryou did. She was so far ahead that she was able to look both ways before crossing and step out into the road before Ryou could catch up. The red 'Don't Walk' symbol was still glowing.

Ryou started to run. "Amane, stop! The light's still red!"

Amane looked back over her shoulder, still scowling at him, still angry-

-loud, ear splitting sound-

-flash blur blue and black truck flash in the light-

-shriek, was it brakes, was it-?-

-thud, so small and soft but Ryou could still hear it, hear it, hear it-

. . .

Ryou stood, as immobile as though his feet were frozen to the pavement. His feet really were very cold. And his nose. They might _be_ frozen. Rock hard. He might never be able to move his toes again, or wriggle his nose. That would be sad.

Amane was gone.

Where had she gone? She was right there, looking at him, then…

He didn't want to look, but his head moved of its own volition. Maybe he really was possessed; his body kept acting on its own, with no input from him whatsoever.

He turned his head and noticed that in the snow on the street, as well as the regular sets of tire tracks left by the flow of traffic, there was a set that swept through them all at an odd angle, obliterating the neat lines of organized traffic. A black swath of chaos through the white order. His eyes followed the wild tracks until he came to the tires that had left them. Ten tires, two and two sets of four, they belonged to a cross-country truck. The truck was blue, white logo on the side, and knifed across both sides of traffic, an effective blockade. Ryou stared at it.

Ryou stared at the truck, his chest hurting. He stared at it, and stared as the driver threw open his door and staggered out, almost falling headfirst into the snow. He was yelling something, his mouth stretched wide, but Ryou couldn't tell what it was.

Why did his chest hurt?

The driver stumbled in the road and Ryou watched him, fascinated. What had the driver stumbled on? Snow? Ryou looked. It wasn't snow, it was too colorful. Pink and yellow.

A backpack.

Amane's backpack.

Where was Amane?

His legs worked. He didn't tell them to go, but they went. He ran on frozen feet, following the truck driver because there was no one else and he didn't know where he should be running _to_. He followed him around the front of his blue truck, and noticed another color in the white and gray of street snow.

Red.

He stopped. He looked down.

There was Amane.

He started to grin, and didn't know why. He shouldn't grin, but he couldn't stop.

There was Amane.

His chest hurt.

For the first time since he yelled for Amane to stop, Ryou took a breath.

And began to scream.

…

_**A/N2:**__ After a look through all the chapters that have come before, this is the longest by far. _

_**Higashi-ku:**__ This is a specific section of a city in Japan I picked as where the Bakura family currently resides. It's not really important where it is, since it's a placeholder and nothing of the city in question shows up in the fic, but for anyone who's curious, it's Sapporo in Hokkaido. (Which would make the school Naebo Elementary… but don't expect this to be a perfect match. I don't even know if this school was around in 1990.)_

_**Kagome Kagome:**__ The name used for the 'virus' sweeping through comes from a children's game and song. In the game, one child is chosen as the oni (ogre) and sits with eyes closed while the rest of the children circle around them singing the song. When the song stops, the oni tries to guess who it is that stand behind them. It's an interesting game and (creepy) song, and the various interpretations of the lyrics makes interesting reading. I find some of them particularly fitting for the relationship between Ryou and Bakura. _

_**Pocket money:**__ ¥500 in 1990 would come out to just under $4. _

_**Amane's Death:**__ This is, actually, canonically correct. In Duel 50 (of volume 6 of the original run) Ryou is shown to be writing a letter to his sister, Amane. In another book, __Yu-Gi-Oh! Character Guidebook: The Gospel of Truth__, it's revealed that Amane Bakura died in a traffic accident and that Ryou continues to write to her in heaven. Unfortunately this book has only ever been released in Japanese and French, so the rest of us have to search out this info. As for the exact specifics of Amane's death (hit by a truck while crossing a street) I will admit to being heavily inspired by Goendama's doujinshi __Boku to Maou__. I recommend it to anyone who can find it. Ryou's letter to Amane, for anyone who is curious, runs like this:_

"_Dear Amane,  
>How is school? How are you and mother? Your brother started his new school today. I've only been there a little while and on the very first day I made a lot of new friends. They asked if they could come over to my apartment to play some games. I'm really looking forward"<em>

_At which point Ryou was interrupted in his writing by the voice of Bakura._

_**Yu-Gi-Oh! Character Guidebook: The Gospel of Truth:**__ This doesn't have anything to do with the fic directly, but for anyone who is intrigued by this book and would like to read it - but is hampered by being a strictly English speaker - there is hope. Two fans are working on scanning, translating and posting the entirety of the book online for others to read. They can be found on tumblr at yugiohbibleproject dot tumblr dot com. They are accepting donations and general encouragement to fuel the project. :)_

_**Thanks for reading, everyone, and for your patience. Until next time!**_


End file.
